


Living the Dream

by noracharles89



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Consensual Kink, F/F, Spanking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-03
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2018-07-29 02:22:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 45,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7666624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noracharles89/pseuds/noracharles89
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You’d never know that Erin Gilbert was the ultimate dreamer. She had cultivated her Fantasy Face ™ into an expression that closely resembled the one she wore when solving a particularly difficult equation. So no one knew that she wanted to dance Swan Lake. Or cook with as much flourish as Julia Child. Or spank someone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

You’d never know that Erin Gilbert was the ultimate dreamer. She had cultivated her Fantasy Face ™ into an expression that closely resembled the one she wore when solving a particularly difficult equation. 

So no one knew that she wanted to dance Swan Lake.

Or cook with as much flourish as Julia Child.

Or spank someone. 

Oy. Somehow that last one brought her more shame than the others, despite arguably being the most attainable of her wild dreams. The desire could be triggered at any time. 

A mention of punishment.

A particularly sound high five

Abby Yates slapping Jillian Holtzmann’s ass. 

“Can you believe her?” 

Erin looked up when she realized that Abby was addressing her. She took in the scene before her, which she had been oblivious to until that moment. Abby stood with her hands on her hips, lips pursed, and an eyebrow raised. Holtzmann was leaning on the table; all swagger and dimples, despite the large hole burned into the front of her jumpsuit. Erin reached out to touch it. 

“What did you do?”

“No harm, no foul.” 

“Nuh-uh,” Abby glared, “she took an untested ‘toy’ to that bust at Marie’s Crisis. She got the ghost, but that thing exploded, and some kind of liquid flew out of it.”

“It ate straight through my clothes,” Holtzmann did not have the decency to look ashamed, “but my flesh is fine. So, so, so fine.”

“Y’know what, Erin? I’m tagging you in here,” Abby turned to leave, “you see if you can get your girlfriend to be a little less reckless.”

“I love you too, Abigail Yates,” Holtzmann called after their friend. 

Erin sighed. She leveled her gaze at her girlfriend, who had pulled herself up onto the table. Holtzmann was swinging her legs in anticipation of the inevitable lecture. 

“You aren’t hurt at all?”

“I’m fine,” Holtzmann shrugged. 

“That isn’t what I asked.”

Erin stood up and closed the space between them, daring Holtzmann to lie to her. 

“Second degree burn on my left arm,” the blonde held her chin up defiantly, “minor.”

She winced as Erin pulled up the sleeve of her jumpsuit. 

“This needs to be cleaned.” 

Holtzmann nodded. 

“You’re mad at me.”

“Well,” Erin began dressing Holtzmann’s burn, “you did promise me that you’d more careful.”

“Hey,” Holtzmann wrapped her legs around Erin, “I can still walk this time—that’s progress.”

“This could have been prevented,” Erin pushed Holtzmann’s legs down. 

Truthfully, she found it damn near impossible to stay mad at her girlfriend. But if Holtzmann knew how easy it was to re-endear herself to Erin, she would probably pull stunts more frequently than she did now—and that was a scary thought. 

So as Holtzmann ducked her head and studied her shoes, Erin tried to keep the annoyance on her brow— even as Holtzmann’s sheepishness tugged at her heart. 

“I wasn’t thinking,” she offered quietly. 

“That much is painfully clear,” Erin chuckled mirthlessly. 

“I’m like a little kid when I build a new toy,” Holtzmann went back to kicking her legs, “I don’t have a lot of common sense to begin with, and my excitement eradicates what little there is.”

“Maybe I should treat you like a little kid.”

The words rolled out of Erin’s mouth easily, before she could catch them and shove them back in. She had uttered that phrase so many times in her fantasies that the crossing of the line between daydream and reality was easier than she ever thought it would be.

Holtzmann stopped kicking. 

“What?”

Her downcast eyes rose to meet Erin’s, and they stared at each other, for what felt to Erin like an eternity. Her first instinct is to laugh, to play it off as a rather Holtzmann-like joke, but something in her mad scientist’s eyes stopped her. When the corners of the blonde’s mouth turned up, ever so slightly, Erin realized that it was consent. 

“Go upstairs and wait for me,” she was surprised at how strong she sounded— how natural it felt to be in control. 

They would have privacy on Holtzmann’s floor. 

Her girlfriend slid off the table and moved past her, turning back when she reached the foot of the stairs, “what does one wear for a spanking?” 

Erin shivered at Holtzmann’s use of the word. 

“Nothing,” she said, trying to keep the smile out of her voice. 

Holtzmann managed to control her excitement on the first few steps, but it took over when she hit the fourth. She ran up the remaining stairs, removing her jumpsuit as she hopped. 

Erin let herself grin.


	2. Actually Living the Dream

Holtzmann’s room was surprisingly feminine. Erin was always struck by the juxtaposition when she passed through the engineer’s rugged lab and stepped into the room the blonde had moved into on the second floor. 

There were twinkly fairy lights surrounding the headboard of the captain’s bed that sat in the corner, and the mix matched quilts that covered it were soft and floral. She was fascinated by this side of Holtz—she supposed that it was the same side that compelled her girlfriend to carefully apply the eyeliner she wore under her yellow tinted goggles, and to sacrifice a significant number of precious morning-minutes to styling her hair in that effortless-looking updo. 

The updo had been undone. Holtzmann’s hair spilled over her bare shoulders in soft waves. She sat on her bed with her legs crossed under her, fiddling with the scalloped edge of one of her blankets. She was nude, except for her black underwear, and was backlit by the lights above her bed. Erin wondered if she was trying to kill her. 

She approached the bed and held out her hands. Holtzmann took them, and Erin pulled her to her feet.

“I thought I said to wear nothing,” Erin stood nose to nose with her girlfriend. Holtzmann reached down and pulled off her underwear without breaking eye contact. She dropped them on the floor, where they joined her burned jumpsuit and every other article of clothing she had worn that week. 

The blonde looked nervous, and this delighted Erin. She was so used to looking to Holtzmann—ever so much more experienced and always slightly smug Holtzmann— for guidance in all things sexual. The uncertainty in Holtz’s eyes was new. And the excitement caused by this development seemed to travel directly between Erin’s legs. 

“C’mere,” Erin sat down on her bed and guided the smaller woman across her knee. Holtzmann inhaled sharply as her center came in contact with Erin’s thighs. 

Erin raised her hand up and brought it down sharply on her girlfriend’s ass. The cracking sound that the contact made was satisfying, but it paled in comparison to the surprised squeak that escaped Holtzmann’s lips. Erin had a good right hand. Having no particular interest in anything athletic, she hadn’t found a way to put it to good use before that moment. 

She wasn’t going to waste the opportunity. 

So she struck again. 

And again. 

And again. 

She fell into a rhythm, alternating sides and moving up and down—wanting to give all of Holtzmann’s ass equal coverage. She was pleased to see it turn pink, and then red. 

For her part, Holtz was a mess. Between the erotic sting that Erin’s hand was building—not being able to control the erotic sting that Erin’s hand was building--loving the erotic sting that Erin’s hand was building— while still being fully aware that the erotic sting that Erin’s hand was building fucking _hurt_ —she was on sensory overload. 

Toss in the fact that her slit was rubbing against Erin’s thigh as she writhed, and the poor engineer didn’t stand a chance. 

Every time that she thought she had a handle on it all, it was as if Erin could sense it (spoiler alert: she could). The former professor would pick up the pace of her slaps, target her previously untouched thighs, or strike with new intensity. 

Holtzmann rewarded Erin’s efforts with kicks, yelps, and moans. 

Content with the cherry hue of her girlfriend’s backside, and satisfied by quivering wreck she had reduced her to, Erin stopped. She rubbed gentle circles on Holtzmann’s back, giving the blonde a moment to catch her breath. 

“Are you going to be more careful on busts, Jillian?”

“Ugh,” was all Holtzmann could muster. 

“Hey,” Erin chuckled and ran her fingers through Holtz’s tangled hair, “Use your words.”

“Yes,” the reply was faint. 

Erin removed her hand from Holtzmann’s hair and dipped it between the engineer’s thighs. 

“Hmmm,” she murmured as she felt the wetness, “I’m not sure how effective this was as a deterrent.”

“It was,” Holtz shuddered at the contact, “very, very effective.” 

Erin moved her thumb on top of Holtz’s clit. Holtz was so revved up that it only took a few gentle circles before she was exploding against Erin’s hand. 

After she had ridden it out she rolled over onto her back—just in time to catch Erin licking her thumb. 

“Gilbert,” she said with a wolfish grin, “you’re a goddamn animal.”

Erin shrugged abashedly, feeling her face turn red.

“You just beat the shit out of me,” Holtz mused, “and that makes you blush?”

“I did not beat the shit out of you,” Erin grinned.

“You kind of did.”

“You kind of loved it.”

Holtz kissed Erin sweetly. Yeah. Yeah she did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who left kudos and comments on the first chapter. Sorry this took me so long to produce! Life happened. I'm a pretty shit proofreader, so I’m gonna go ahead and apologize for any typos and such too. 
> 
> Any interest in this continuing? I’m open to prompts/suggestions for stories along the same lines, too.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Holtzmann isn't taking care of herself. Erin isn't pleased. Kink ensues.

Holtzmann is an eternal optimist. She finds joy in the dark, the light, the confusing, the complicated, and the mundane. Her yellow tinted goggles might as well be rose, and if you spend enough time around her, incessant sunshine will creep into your worldview. 

Which is why it’s so hard for Erin to see her like this. 

Her blue eyes look gray set against the dark circles that have formed around them. 

Her hair is flattened against her skull, without its typical flourish. 

She is thinner, the result of not eating for five days straight. 

She is Holtzmann-shaped, but she is missing the vital, unclouded radiance that makes Holtzmann Holtzmann. 

Erin isn’t privy to the inner workings of her girlfriend’s mind, but she does know that Holtzmann is determined to design a failure-backup for their proton packs. Patty’s had malfunctioned during a bust, and she was pretty banged up after the ghost got the upper hand. Holtzmann shut herself in her lab that night, and over the last five days, she has left only to use the bathroom. 

Patty isn’t mad at her; she explains this every time she brings Holtzmann something to drink. 

Abby has taken to bringing her Pringles and other snacks that crunch. 

Erin brings her actual meals, prepared by her own hands three times a day, even though she finds that Holtz does little more than nibble on them. 

Her patience is wearing thin today. She’d be pissed at anyone who dared to hurt her girlfriend, but it’s hard to know what to do with that anger when her girlfriend is hurting herself. 

Holtzmann doesn’t see it that way.

“I’m fine,” those words sit so easily on her tongue—one of the few lies that she can pull off. 

“I just want you to lie down for a little while,” Erin tries to keep her voice neutral, devoid of scolding, because Holtz will revolt if she thinks she is being scolded, “Two hours.”

“I’m really close,” Holtz waves her hand dismissively. 

“You’ve been saying that for five days,” Erin places a hand on Holtzmann’s shoulder, but Holtzmann shrugs it off immediately. 

“Thanks for bringing that up, sweetheart,” Holtz keeps her eyes focused on the proton pack, “it’s comforting to know just how long it has taken me to figure this out.”

Erin takes a deep breath, trying not to choke on the tension curdling in the air. 

“That isn’t what I meant,” she says quietly, “and I think you know that.”

“I know that I’d like you to leave, because the sound of your voice is like nails on a chalkboard right now.”

Holtzmann regrets the words the second that they leave her mouth. She rarely snaps at anyone—let alone Erin. She drops the wrench that she has been tinkering with. It lands on the table in front of her with a thud. Holtzmann places her head in her shaky hands. 

“I didn’t mean that, Erin.”

Erin knows this. She tries to let the comment roll off of her narrow shoulders without scraping the skin. She takes yet another a deep breath as she silently studies the blonde in front of her; Holtz looks utterly miserable. 

“You need to sleep, Jillian.” Erin gently takes Holtzmann’s hands, massaging her palms. 

“I can’t,” Holtzmann can’t keep her voice from cracking, “my brain won’t turn off until I finish this.”

“You haven’t tried,” Erin chides gently.

“I know myself,” Holtz finally meets Erin’s eyes, “this happens. It’s my own fault; I used to deprive myself of food and sleep in order to heighten my focus in grad school. It was the only way I could get everything done.”

“You aren’t on a deadline, Holtz,” Erin continues rubbing small circles on Holtzmann’s hands. 

“Rest is for the weak,” Holtzmann grumbles. 

Erin pinches the bridge of her nose, marveling at just how intensely infuriating the woman sitting before her is. There is no formula or equation for solving Holtzmann. No chemical combination that will dissolve her stubbornness and make her more pliable. 

But Holtzmann is malleable. Erin has hammered and applied pressure to her form, utilizing her hands, fingers, and tongue to mold her into something boneless—something that relinquishes without losing its shape. 

Erin thinks that some of the recklessness that the blonde radiates has taken up residence in her, because she doesn’t feel any trepidation when she grasps Holtzmann's left hand, pulling her up onto her feet. She guides her over to the long table that sits against the wall of the lab, which is, remarkably, not covered in anything dangerous or explosive. She carefully lifts her girlfriend onto the relatively clean surface.

“Let’s try this conversation from a different angle,” Erin purrs as she undoes the button on Holtzmann’s baggy wide-legged trousers. 

“But—” Holtzmann tries to sit up, still concerned with her project, but Erin pushes her back down firmly. 

The taller woman makes a grab for a piece of discarded rope on the tool shelf above them. 

“Well,” Erin says airily, as she secures her girlfriend’s hands above her head “you’ve proven that you cannot stay still.” 

“I’m not done,” Holtz protests weakly, still trying to wiggle her way off of the table. 

“I’ll gag you too,” Erin tugs on the rope for emphasis, igniting heat between the twine and the delicate skin on the engineer’s wrists. 

Holtzmann looks as though she wants to protest, but the determination on Erin’s face indicates that she is _not fucking around_ , and the blonde’s stomach flutters at the idea of challenging her. She’d like to try that sometime, she thinks, but the lack of sleep has made her bleary-eyed and too vulnerable. Surrender is familiar and comforting when she is with Erin. 

Erin has been watching Holtzmann’s internal struggle carefully, waiting until the blonde relaxes against the restraints before she continues undressing her. 

She is in her bra and underwear now, and Erin growls lowly when she catches sight of the way Holtzmann’s ribs are poking through her skin. She runs the tips of her fingers over the protrusion. 

“You’re going to think twice before you let this happen again,” the physicist accents her steely tone by digging her finger nails into Holtzmann’s side. 

Holtzmann shivers. She is surprised when Erin’s next move is to run her thumb over the already soaked fabric of her cotton briefs. Her touch is gentle, teasing, and consistent. The contact is so tame that it takes a while for the warm waves to build in Holtzmann’s muscles. She moves her hips, trying to increase the intensity of the taction. 

“Not your job,” Erin sharply slaps the front of Holtzmann’s thigh with her free hand. Holtzmann groans in response, but she stills immediately. 

Erin stops stroking just as Holtzmann begins to feel the encouraging creeping sensation at the top of her thighs. She slides Holtzmann’s underwear off slowly, letting them fall to the floor. 

“Let’s talk about food,” the physicist says abruptly. 

Holtzmann’s mouth will not form words; she can only sputter in response. 

“I’m going to cook tonight,” Erin explains simply, “something with protein, and vegetables, and complex carbohydrates, and you are going to sit down, at the dining room table, and eat everything that I put in front of you.”

Holtzmann can feel herself dripping onto the table. “Kay,” she answers, not wanting to prolong the throbbing. 

The engineer doesn’t sound as compliant as Erin would like, but she’ll take it. She lowers herself between Holtzmann’s thighs, letting the tip of her tongue meet Holtzmann’s clit. As Holtzmann arches her back in response, the taller woman stiffens her tongue and traces circles on the intended target. 

Her touch is still light, so Holtzmann settles in, prepared to wait for the heat to build. 

After a minute or so, she is sweating and restless. 

“I know I’m not really in a position to make demands, but…”

Erin complies and applies her tongue faster and harder. Holtzmann feels the familiar volcanic pressure building in her abdomen, and just when she thinks it is ready to erupt—

“Our discussion isn’t over,” Erin stands up and folds her arms, looking as stern as Holtzmann has ever seen her. 

The blonde makes a noise that sounds more animal than human. She suddenly finds herself flipped over onto her stomach, with her legs dangling off of the table. 

“My vag feels like it weighs three hundred pounds,” she says pitifully. 

Erin is glad that Holtz can’t see her face, because she can’t help smiling. 

“Tired?” She asks pointedly.

“Yeah,” Holtz mumbles. 

“Hungry?” Erin grabs a small wooden ruler from the shelf. 

“I could eat,” Holtz admits, well-aware that she is sealing her own undoing. 

“You should have come to me,” Erin runs her fingers down Holtzmann’s back, not wanting her girlfriend to feel uncherished as she chastises her, “I would have helped you work through your compulsion to keep working. We could have gotten you eating and sleeping before your health starting deteriorating.”

“You’re right,” Holtz sounds small and raw.

“I know it’s hard for you to ask for things,” Erin says with sympathy, “but this cannot happen again—I’m not going to watch you turn yourself into someone I barely recognize every time you come up against a busting hurdle.”

“Okay,” Holtz concedes quietly. 

With that, Erin brings the ruler down across Holtzmann’s ass. 

Holtz gasps as the sting registers on her skin. It sends shockwaves directly to her clit, adding another hundred pounds to the weight she is holding there. 

When Erin strikes again, she loses control of her legs. They are kicking now. She can feel herself inching closer to coming, even as Erin isn’t touching her.

Erin has a simple goal in mind for the spanking: paint a row of red lines across her girlfriend’s ass—a souvenir from this experience that will remind Holtzmann of the way she felt on this table, which she will encounter when she sits or shifts. 

Erin works toward that goal diligently. 

Holtzmann goes boneless.

It only takes eight strokes before Erin is satisfied. She sets the ruler on the table before flipping her girlfriend onto her back. Holtz hisses when her striped backside hits the hard metal. 

Once again, Erin situates herself so that she can work Holtzmann over with her tongue. 

Holtzmann whimpers, trying not to get her hopes up. She can feel electricity coiling in her stomach as Erin’s tongue enters her. 

But like clockwork, just as she is about to explode, Erin stops.

“Erin Gilbert,” she moans in agony. 

“Almost, darling,” Erin’s voice is silky, “Hang in there. When we are done here, you are going to rest—for at least three hours. Then you are going to eat. Then you are going to turn in for the night. Tomorrow, we’ll decide how much time you can devote to the proton packs without sacrificing your health, and we’ll take it from there.” 

“Yep, that all sounds great,” Holtzmann will agree to just about anything at this juncture. 

“If you refuse to do any of the aforementioned things,” Erin’s grips Holtzmann’s chin, “I will drag you back here, and we will repeat this performance. But when we get to this point, I’m going to walk away. I’ll leave you tied to this table, utterly unsatisfied, until I am convinced that you’ve learned something.”

Holtzmann shudders. That image is horrifying, but also completely intoxicating. She pictures Abby or Patty happening upon her, restrained, frustrated, and completely helpless. Fuck. 

But she doesn’t have time to contemplate that scenario further, because in one quick motion, Erin has taken Holtzmann’s clit into her mouth. There is sucking, and teeth, and the coiling, volcanic energy that had been brewing in Holtzmann’s stomach finally ruptures into the rest of her body. Erin keeps her tongue and teeth steady as Holtzmann rides the waves, squirming and writhing beneath her.

When she finishes, Erin gently unties Holtzmann’s wrists. She sits down on the table, wrapping her arms around the blond and pulling her onto her lap. 

“I love you,” she whispers softly. 

“I love you too,” Holtzmann rasps. 

When the blonde yawns, Erin can’t help but look smugly victorious. “Let’s get you into bed,” she says, helping her girlfriend stand on her wobbly legs. 

“Will you lay with me while I sleep?” 

“Yep,” Erin ruffles Holtzmann’s unruly hair, “I’ve got to make sure you don’t sneak back up here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My office hours were blessedly student-free today, so I was able to pound this out. I'm not entirely happy with it, but I'm not sure when I'm going to have another chunk of time to work on it, so I'm uploading it as is. I wanted to include some kind of discussion of safe words and consent, since the content is a little darker...but it felt clunky and inorganic. So you'll have to take my word for it when I say that Holtz and Erin have established safe words, and that everything that goes down between them in 100% consensual. Comments, suggestions, ideas for future chapters?


	4. Chapter 4

There is very little banter as Erin pulls back the soft, well-worn blankets on Holtzmann’s bed. It sits on top on six drawers, which Holtz installed in an attempt to cut down on some of her clutter. It didn’t work. Jillian Holtzmann will always be a category five hurricane, leaving evidence of her chaotic existence in every space she inhabits.

Erin, despite her penchant for neatness and order, appreciates her girlfriend’s storminess. Holtzmann’s stuff is _everywhere_ , and she likes finding these artifacts when the engineer isn’t with her. She collects discarded striped socks from the floor of her room, mini-soldering irons left in truly inexplicable places (“but why did you bring it to the salon in the first place?”), screwdrivers from every single room in the firehouse, and bobby pins—oh my God, so many bobby pins—from the floor, the counters, the stairs, and the shower.  

The physicist pulls herself up onto the bed before helping the blonde settle into the space between her legs. She hands her a water bottle that she swiped from the fridge on their way out of the lab. Holtzmann drinks as Erin goes to work on her hair, gently removing the aforementioned pins. She massages Holtzmann’s scalp as she tugs and pulls. Holtz closes her eyes and leans into the contact.

She feels a little silly.

“I should probably tell Abby and Patty that I have returned to the land of the living,” she says with a sigh, “my mad scientist was showing pretty hard.”

“They love all of you,” Erin places a gentle kiss on her bare shoulder, “the crazy and even crazier parts.”

“I struggle with a lot of things that seem to come easily for other people, so when I can’t do the thing that I’m supposed to be really good at, I feel worthless.”

Moments like this soothe and quiet the questions that collect in the back of Erin’s mind concerning her dynamic with Holtzmann. Neither of them know what they are doing. They are fumbling around, sometimes smashing into each other with brute force, and sometimes entangling their limbs gently and delicately. But right now, Jillian Holtzmann is showing Erin Gilbert her frayed seams, and she isn’t stuttering, or nervous. She doesn’t sound like she did the night she made that adorable and heartbreaking toast.  Her voice is strong. 

Erin knows that they must be doing something right.

“You are never worthless,” she says firmly, “and I intend to draft an organized and detailed list of all of the un-science-related-things that I appreciate about you, but I definitely know that feeling.”

Holtzmann turns to face Erin, encouraging her to elaborate.

“I based so much of my self-worth on my academic accomplishments that I put them before the one person who would have loved me whether I was a tenured professor or a sixteen year old girl with a Lord of the Rings obsession and a ghost problem.”

“Abby loves the forty three year old ectoplasm magnet whose sick dance moves manifest in her fingers,” Holtz smiles sleepily at her.

Erin giggles, sounding girlish and young, “Abby is the best.”

“She’s a champ,” the blonde nods, “and so is Patty.”

“Patty thinks we are all insane.”

“Batshit,” Holtz agrees, “but she loves us anyway.”

Erin lies back, scooting so that her head is on the excessive pile of pillows on the bed. She opens her arms, and Holtzmann folds into her— the engineer’s back against physicist’s chest.

“Do you want me to ask them to have dinner with us tonight,” Erin’s breath is warm and comforting against Holtzmann’s neck, “or do you need some space?”

“I’m ready to face them,” Holtz yawns, “they’ll be really happy that I’m eating.”

“They will,” Erin runs her fingers through her girlfriend’s hair.

“Hey,” Holtzmann says after a beat, “would you really leave me tied to the table like you said before?”

“Yes,” Erin doesn’t hesitate, “if you push me. But I’d stay in hearing-range, and if you used your safe word, I’d come get you and we’d figure something else out.”

“You wouldn’t be disappointed in me?”

Erin turns Holtzmann around so that they are nose to nose.

“Never,” her gaze is warm, but unyielding, “I won’t ever be upset by your limits. I want you to promise me that you won’t try to endure something that isn’t working for you because you think it will please me.”

“I promise,” Holtz complies sincerely before smiling, “it took us a long time to come up with that safe word.”

Erin remembers. She made a list, as she always does, but Holtzmann crossed all of her suggestions out:

     “You’ve never used the word ‘cattywampus.’”

     “That doesn’t mean I won’t!”

     “In bed?”

     “I could see myself screaming that in ecstasy.”

They finally settled on “celery,” because Holtzmann despises celery, and she would _never_ associate it with anything related to Erin.

“Honestly,” Holtz confesses as she pulls a blanket over them, “I was kind of turned on by the idea.”

“Of course you were,” Erin chuckles, “you’re impossible to punish.”

“I’d like to make you a deal.”

“I’d like you to sleep.”

“If I take a particularly impressive nap, and I eat a spectacular amount of food,” the engineer traces the curve of Erin’s jaw with her index finger, “can I finger-bang you in the shower tonight?”

“I suppose,” Erin kisses her girlfriend’s forehead.

“Score!” Holtzmann kisses her girlfriend's nose.

“Sleep, Jillian.”

Erin gently slides her fingertips across Holtzmann’s arm until the younger woman’s breathing slows. She props herself up on one elbow, feeling devoted and content as she watches her tiny tempest’s chest rise and fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a little sweetness to balance the kink. Thanks for reading--and thanks again to everyone who has been a-commenting and a-kudoing.


	5. It's My Party Pt. 1

Erin isn’t incredibly tall. Holtzmann measured her once, for the purpose of data collection, and was surprised to learn that she was only five foot five. The redhead appears taller, probably because every part of her lean frame is long and willowy. 

She is bopping to Meghan Trainor’s _All About That Bass,_ and Erin is all about those lengthy limbs and awkward angles. She has never looked less intimidating, and Holtzmann wonders how in the world this prancing physicist manages to expertly dragoon her in the sack.

But the nerd standing before her is the Erin Gilbert that she fell in love with. The way that she can push and position Holtzmann in the heat of the moment is just an added bonus. 

Erin’s nose crinkles when she meets Holtzmann’s eyes in her mirror. She straightens the fabric of the black dress she bought yesterday. 

“Do you think this is too sexy?”

Holtzmann snorts—for two reasons. One: the dress, while lovely and flattering, shows no cleavage, covers the tops of her arms, and sits just above the knee. And two: 

“We are going to a spanking-party, Erin.”

Erin’s face flushes, with most of the heat settling in her cheeks and on the tip of her nose. Holtzmann is so very glad that she settled on a low-key get together for Erin’s first foray into the public scene. Her girlfriend’s face would stain a permanent red in a dungeon or a club like Paddles. 

“What are you going to wear?”

“My trench coat.”

“With?”

“Nothing underneath.”

Erin rolls her eyes.

Holtz actually wears a pair of baggy harem pants, with Erin’s MIT sweatshirt layered over a shabby pin stripe vest, which gets an eyebrow raise from the party’s host.

“Over dressed as always, Jillian,” the smartly styled older woman says. 

“Anything for you, Maddie-Cakes.”

“I’m Ms. Madeline,” the host offers her hand to Erin, “please never call me Maddie-Cakes.”

“Erin—and I will definitely never do that.” 

Ms. Madeline ushers the two scientists into the party. It is housed in a rented space: a decent sized room in an LGBTQ center in the Village with chairs, benches, and four private nooks, which are sectioned off by curtains. The people mulling about look like anyone you’d run into during a trip to Duane Reade: college students, people in their thirties, middle aged-men in suits. 

No one is spanking anyone yet. 

Holtzmann makes a beeline for the snack table, depositing the chips that she brought next to a bowl of French onion dip.

“Swedish Fish,” she grabs a handful of the red candies, “that means that Ollie is here.”

“Ollie?” 

Before Holtz can answer, a tall and tan Ken Doll of a man slides between them. He places a disturbingly muscular arm around Erin. 

“I’m Mark,” he says with a smile that probably makes a lot of men and women week in the knees. 

“This is Erin,” Holtzmann bats his arm away, “she's with me, cowboy.”

“I’ve always wanted to dole out some damage with you.”

“She’s a top.”

Erin feels like she is under a microscope as Mark’s blue eyes give her the once over. 

“Unexpected on all accounts,” he says with a grin. Holtzmann waves him away and pulls Erin over to a table that is covered in name tag stickers. 

Holtzmann selects a tag with a red border and hands it to her. Erin reads the sign hanging above the table, and learns the red stickers are for tops, the blue are for bottoms, and the white are reserved for switches. 

Erin isn’t sure how she feels about labeling herself. She is learning as she goes, piecing together bits of research with her own experiments as she navigates her relationship with Holtz. 

“Unless you have the urge to go over someone’s knee tonight,” Holtzmann says, sensing her hesitation, “you want to put this on. You’ve got a little bit of a shy schoolgirl thing going on. You are going to get hounded.”

Erin places the sticker above her heart, repositioning it a few times until it is straight. Though she can’t trace the feeling back to a logical origin, the fact that Holtzmann chooses a white sticker makes her uneasy. 

They have tried to switch roles only once. It had been Erin’s idea, prompted by the clothing that they had donned one morning. She was wearing a pleated skirt and penny loafers, and Holtz had looked particularly professorial in her tweed trousers and blazer. They attempted to role-play in Holtzmann’s lab, but—

“What does a bad student do?”  
“Make excuses for not turning in your essay in on time.”  
“There is no excuse for not turning an essay in on time.”  
“Try.”  
“Um. Okay, so…I couldn’t complete my essay because of my grandma. Last week, she was alive. And now she is dead.”  
“Erin! No professor is going to punish you because your grandmother died.”  
“Maybe we should just do it.”  
“Yeah, okay.”

And that was that. 

“Jilly-Bean!”

A petite, pigtailed, blue-labeled girl in a short sailor dress envelops Holtzmann in a hug. 

“This is Ollie,” Holtzmann spins the tiny woman around in her arms so that she is facing Erin, “Ollie, this is Erin.”

Ollie’s eyes trail Erin’s form from her toes to the top of her head. Erin realizes that at this party, she is something to be studied. 

Ollie’s jaw drops. “Erin—the girlfriend—Erin?”

“That’s me,” Erin hates the way her voice sounds squeaky and small. 

“Jillian Holtzmann, you’re dating a top?”

A young African American man approaches the threesome, wrapping his arms around Ollie’s shoulders. Erin notes his red nametag and admires his pink oxfords, avoiding everyone’s eyes. 

“I just heard a crazy rumor,” he says.

“Saul, this is Erin,” Holtzmann takes her girlfriend’s hand, “and yes—she is a top.”

Saul shakes her hand, trying to hide the fact that he is taking all of Erin in. 

“You must really be something,” he says with an easy smile, “I’ve never seen anyone tame Jilly-Bean.”

“I haven’t really tamed her,” Erin replies quietly, “I’m not sure that’s possible.”

Erin is blushing, but she isn’t sure exactly why. She curses her unforgiving complexion and social anxiety. 

“So, now that you guys are going steady,” Ollie giggles, turning her attention to Holtzmann, “I suppose you aren’t ever going to able to give me what you owe me.” 

“Holtzmann told my wife that she would cane her a few months back,” Saul explains to Erin. 

“You two are married?” She asks. 

The couple nods. 

“Four years,” Ollie says with pride. 

This is comforting, somehow, Erin thinks. 

“You don’t miss destroying unsuspecting girls, one session at a time?” Ollie asks Holtz with a mischievous grin. 

“We keep busy,” Holtzmann shrugs.

Erin isn’t particularly bothered by the image of Holtzmann caning the impish girl. She is actually a little intrigued, and she does wonder if her girlfriend misses being in the driver’s seat. She wouldn’t be comfortable with someone topping the blonde. That thought ignites her insecurities, especially given everyone’s disbelief at her role, but they came here to play. And when in Rome…

“You could, if you want,” she says lowly, “I don’t mind.” 

Holtzmann’s eyebrows shoot up. 

“You sure?” 

“I’d like to watch,” Erin smiles shyly. 

“Hey,” Ollie protests, suddenly aware of her precarious position, “I don’t even remember what I did.”

“You ate every Swedish Fish on the snack table,” Holtzmann isn’t one to forget a slight, “for the express purpose of pissing me off.” 

“There were five bags,” Saul laughs, “she was so sick.”

“So I clearly learned my lesson,” Ollie quips. 

Saul hands Holtzmann a long, thin cane from a bag of toys, which he has been carrying on his shoulder. 

“Will this work?” 

Holtzmann gives it a few test swipes. It cuts through the air smoothly, and the sound increases Erin’s heart rate. 

Saul leads the group to one of the private areas. It’s a tight fit behind the curtain, as they are sized for two players, but they make it work. 

Holtz pulls a chair to the center of the space. 

“Over,” she says, her voice lowering to a register that Erin doesn't recognize, “Saul, you want to warm her up for me?”

Saul is on it. He lifts the sailor dress, revealing Ollie’s black lacy thong and creamy skin. He spanks her lightly, continuing until Holtzmann’s target is light pink. 

He and the blonde switch places. Holtzmann plants her feet in preparation. The muscles in her thin arms flex as she grips the cane. She brings it down across Ollie’s ass. Ollie screeches, prompting a round of applause from the other party attendees listening outside. 

“I’d like to really push you over the edge, Ols,” Holtzmann walks around so that she can see the dark haired woman’s face, “what do you say?”

“Do your worst, Jilly-Bean,” Ollie says, not sounding at all scared. 

Holtzmann circles back around to her previous position, winking at Erin as she passes her. 

She raises the cane again, this time bringing it down in light strokes in rapid succession. Ollie kicks and squeals, caught in the invigorating meeting of pain and pleasure. 

Erin is mesmerized. She doesn’t know why it hasn’t occurred to her that Holtzmann would be a natural top. The swagger, the aggression, her fearless confidence—all of these traits are shining in the spotlight as she canes Ollie. 

A wave of arousal hits the physicist as Holtzmann delivers her final stroke. The blonde then helps Ollie to her feet. Erin isn't sure how the smaller woman is standing so steadily, but she can’t help but be impressed. Holtzmann gives the pigtailed woman a firm hug before releasing her to her husband, who kisses her deeply. 

“Like what you saw?” Holtzmann leans on the chair, radiating heat and brass as she eyes Erin. 

“Um,” Erin, always-smooth Erin, chokes on her own saliva before she can respond.

“You are pretty timid for a top,” Ollie giggles, “Timid Top has a nice ring to it.”

There is no malice in her voice, and it's not like that isn't true, but Erin really thought that her days of alliterated nicknames were behind her. 

She had felt inferior before Holtzmann’s dashing display of dominance, but now she is painfully aware that her own submissive is a more effective top than she is. Holtzmann is so much more experienced than her. Did it really make sense for her to lead? Had her girlfriend been humoring her? 

These questions and insecurities are so familiar to her that they are almost comfortable. Variations of them pop up in everything Erin does. 

Now they are tinged with arousal. 

She reminds herself that she is a freaking Ghostbuster. She thinks about how much more comfortable she has felt in her own skin since reuniting with Abby and joining her gang of badasses. 

She can handle this. 

She grips Holtzmann’s wrist, pulling the younger woman towards her, ready to let her dominate flag fly. 

But Holtzmann has other ideas.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FIELD TRIP! Whew. The second part of this arc is forthcoming. Hopefully it’ll do it for those of you who requested that Holtz challenge Erin. How do you think that is going to turn out for her?
> 
> I'm suddenly having some strange formatting issues when I paste text out of Word. Sorry for any weirdness in that area.
> 
> Uh, also: if anyone from the NYC-spanking scene happens upon this: any similarities between real people and places and those depicted in this story are completely coincidental. Okay, they are really thinly veiled. Just don’t tell the real MM.


	6. It's My Party pt. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heads up: this is a kind of bridge between the last chapter and the conclusion of this particular story line. Slight cliffhanger ahead. But the next part is much more substantial, and will hopefully be up by tomorrow, and if not, it will definitely be in by Friday.

Holtzmann is revved up and feeling cocky, inebriated with the satisfaction of having expertly reduced Ollie to a wilted, repentant flower. 

She has been toying with the idea of challenging Erin since their adventure on her lab table the week before. And something about Erin’s stern expression and perfectly shaped, cocked eyebrow is inspiring her contrary tendencies. 

Holtzmann pulls back from the redhead's grasp, meeting her eyes brazenly. 

As much as they would both like to watch what is about to take place, Ollie and Saul have the sense to clear the private space, making excuses about needing a drink on their way out. 

Erin blushes, for what feels like the thousandth time that night, frustrated that she couldn’t get the upper hand in front of their audience. 

“You're looking a little ruddy, ‘Rin,” Holtzmann teases, “do you think you're coming down with something?”

“I would stop talking if I were you,” Erin’s voice sounds a little stronger, but she is fighting a biological battle. She’d like very much to be able to ignore the specific kind of throbbing between her legs in favor of taking Holtzmann in hand, but she is also still so goddamned turned on from watching the engineer dominate that she is having trouble formulating a plan.

And outside of the world of engineering, there are few things that Jillian Holtzmann has mastered as well as sensing and exploiting the weaknesses that she invokes in women. 

She has Erin exactly where she wants her. 

Erin tries to resist as Holtzmann pulls her over to the chair in the center of the space, but she soon finds herself bent over it. 

Now, Holtzmann is daring, but she doesn’t have a death wish. She has faith in Erin’s dominant streak—even if Erin herself doesn’t at the moment—and she knows that she will pay later for anything that she does now. 

So she isn’t about to spank her girlfriend, though she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t tempted. Instead, she lifts Erin’s black dress and uses two fingers to enter her from behind. 

Erin whimpers. She half-heartedly slaps at Holtzmann’s thighs, but when Holtzmann adds a third finger, she needs the support the chair under her is providing. She cannot focus on anything but the way that Holtzmann feels inside of her, and how helpless she is as the engineer roughly fucks her. She squirms as the pressure inside her builds, and Holtzmann presses into her in response. 

She comes hard. Holtzmann covers her mouth with her free hand to muffle the ecstasy-laced moan that tries to escape. The blonde holds her firmly as she shudders against her. 

They stay like this for a moment, until their breathing slows to a non-critical rate. 

“You need a drink?” Holtzmann asks. 

“Yeah,” Erin smooths her dress and runs her fingers through her hair, trying to eliminate some of the fluster. 

Five minutes later, they are sipping seltzer against the wall, standing with Ollie and Saul. 

Erin thinks it is pretty obvious to anyone with half a working brain that she did not come out on top after her run in with Holtzmann. Maybe she should swap her red sticker out for a blue one. She would make every top that had eyed it with skepticism exceedingly happy. 

And there are more. 

A vulgar, drunk man swings by to tell her that she would look more at home face down. Holtzmann assures her that Ms. Madeline will soon notice his behavior and kick him out.  
Two women, a couple, ask how in the world she got Holtzmann to submit, and they don’t seem especially enamored by her quiet, stuttering response. 

And now Holtzmann’s pretty ex-girlfriend Lily is standing before her, looking like some kind of curvy Grecian Goddess. 

“So you’re the Timid Top I’ve been hearing about?”

Erin glares at Ollie, not particularly happy that the moniker has spread.

“Yep, that’s me,” she can taste the bitterness on her tongue, “but don't worry, I know that I’m unworthy of the former toppiest of all topping tops.”

Up until now, Erin has done a pretty good job of hiding her self-doubt. She had smiled enough throughout the evening to keep her girlfriend’s concern at bay, and to the others, this outburst just sounds acerbic and blithe. 

Holtzmann knows better. Shit. Her stunt in the private nook was poorly timed. The engineer wants to jump in and put an end to the Timid Top business, knowing that it is probably triggering some less than pleasant Ghost Girl memories. She would like to assure her friends—and Erin—that her girlfriend is both a demure little dork and an amazingly competent dominant—that she never really considered her submissive potential until she found herself over Erin’s knee. Erin is just _that_ sexy when she takes control, and she walks the line between genuine punishment and play like a talented tightrope walker. 

But she doesn’t say anything. 

She knows that Erin needs to get the upper hand herself. If Holtzmann sweeps in, Erin will feel better momentarily, but her confidence will take a hit. 

Holtzmann wants her girlfriend to show this whole damn party who is boss. 

Alas, making that happen is going to require getting herself into a fair amount of trouble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I edited this while my students watched SNL digital shorts. If those sweet-faced freshman only knew.
> 
> I just starting Tumblring again. Not much going on there yet, but hit me up at TenureIsForDudes.tumblr.com (thanks Jude!) if you want to chat about anything Ghostbusters related, send me prompts, or read about the crazy things I manage to get away with as a professor without getting fired.


	7. It's My Party pt. 3

Holtzmann’s eyes fall on the belligerently drunk man who had hit on Erin earlier. He is still puttering around, knocking chairs over and making the younger women at the party uncomfortable. 

Strangely, the security guard and Ms. Madeline have both disappeared. Holtzmann grins when she realizes that they must have taken a break. To play. Together. 

That leaves the expulsion of the drunk to the attendees of the party. 

Perfect. 

She knows that her first instinct—to barge over and get in the middle-aged asshole’s face—will not please Erin. 

“I’m gonna go talk to that dick,” Holtzmann gestures to the man, who is currently leaning over a scared-looking college student with purple hair.

“No,” Erin grips her arm, “he seems slightly unhinged.” 

“Exactly,” Holtzmann says, “he is bothering that girl.”

She takes a step toward him. Erin doesn’t release her arm. 

“I can go,” Saul says, “I’ll grab one of the guys, and we’ll get him out of here.”

“That’s sweetly sexist, Saul,” Holtzmann drawls, “but why should you have all the fun?”

“It isn’t sexist,” Erin tries to tug her girlfriend back to the wall, “you are one of the smallest people here.”

“The tiniest mite packs the mightiest sting,” Holtzmann pries Erin’s hand off of her forearm and makes a mad dash for the dude. 

As predicted, Erin steps in front of her, and boy oh boy is she unhappy. It’s moments like these that she appears taller.

Significantly taller. 

“I’m telling you to not go over there.”  


Holtzmann’s stomach is a palpable breeding ground for butterflies, but she swallows and saunters into Erin’s personal space. 

“What are you going to do if I do? I’d like to weigh the risk.”

Ooh. Erin looks positively feral. 

“Risk implies possibility. If you go over there, I will _definitely_ drag you to the center of this room and deal with you in front of everyone.”

That’ll do. 

The purple haired girl yelps as the drunk grabs the front of her shirt, pulling her up out of her seat, mumbling something about teaching her a lesson. 

Things are escalating faster than the engineer had anticipated. 

Saul starts towards the man, and with one last glance at Erin’s furious face, Holtzmann follows. 

Her girlfriend’s fate sealed, Erin growls and stalks behind her. 

“Hey, Liquor Larry!” 

“Well,” the drunk lets go of the girl and turns his attention to Holtzmann, “what have we got here?”

The man lunges for Holtz, and for one terrifying moment, she is incapacitated when he grabs a fistful of her hair. 

He yanks hard enough to pull her feet off the ground. 

Ollie calls the police. 

Saul formulates a plan to take him down. 

Erin stops breathing. 

Then Holtzmann lands a hard kick square in his nuts. 

And Ollie cheers.

And the man topples over.

And Saul pins the man’s hands behind his back.

And Erin pulls Holtzmann towards her, needing to breathe in her scent before letting her concern give way to something much less pleasant.

Ms. Madeline and the security guard return, rather sheepishly, but in their defense, they had left their kids alone for all of fifteen minutes. 

The security guard takes the man outside, explaining that he will wait with him until the police arrive. 

Ms. Madeline asks Holtzmann if she is okay. 

Holtzmann is feeling a little shaky. The hair grab hadn’t been part of her not so carefully crafted plan. She had been banking on Erin’s overprotective nature, not on placing herself in actual danger. 

Erin’s thumb is gently kneading her sore scalp, but the contact feels as ominous as it does comforting. 

Holtzmann turns her attention to the purple-haired girl. “You alright, kiddo?”

The girl nods, evidence of an instantaneous crush showing on her baby face. 

“Me too,” Holtzmann smiles at her. 

“Not for long,” Erin remarks dryly.

Dr. Gorin once told Holtzmann that the true composition of beauty always includes terror, and her stomach lurches as she steals a glance at Erin’s exquisitely terrifying face. 

She is keenly aware of the crowd’s collective eye on her. There had been a chance, before the man lifted her off the ground, that what followed could have blended into the sea of individual scenes playing out in the room. Sure, the sight of Jillian Holtzmann in a yielding position would have drawn some curious glances and attracted a few onlookers, but without context the crowd’s interest would have waned. 

Now the frantic activity swirling around the blonde has aimed everyone’s focus directly at her and her girlfriend. And Erin is far angrier than Holtzmann ever intended her to be. 

It’s woefully apparent to everyone in the room that she is in deep shit, and a lot of disgruntled tops and vengeful bottoms are going to delight in watching her unravel. 

Holtzmann feels like she is floating as Erin pulls her to the middle of the room. 

The physicist doesn’t waste any time. She sits down on a straight-backed wooden chair and unceremoniously yanks her girlfriend over her knee. She hooks a finger into the waistband of Holtzmann’s pants and pulls them down to her ankles.

Holtz squeezes her eyes shut, face burning under her rapt audience's gaze. 

“I’m not going to lecture you,” Erin’s voice is throaty, “because I’d rather focus on showing you just how severely you underestimated the consequences of that risk.”

Holtzmann doesn’t have a chance to respond, because Erin is spanking her. Hard. Harder than the engineer ever imagined she could. Did she surgically replace the bones in her right hand with steel? 

The blonde tries so very hard to play it cool, still concerned with the reputation she has built as an unflappable Casanova. 

Erin isn’t having it. She strikes more rapidly without compromising force. It usually takes a while to get Holtzmann kicking, but her legs are already bucking as Erin spanks her hard and fast.

The engineer’s hand flies back instinctually, trying to shield herself from the swats that are raining down onto her sensitive flesh. Erin catches the rogue appendage smoothly, pinning it to Holtzmann’s back without missing a literal beat. 

She presses her right knee into Holtzmann’s slit, prompting her girlfriend to lift slightly, giving Erin better access to the place where her thighs meet her ass. 

Erin has no intention of stopping any time soon, but she is prompted to pause by Ollie’s sudden presence behind her left shoulder. 

An unexpected ally, she is holding a riding crop. 

“This is her weapon of choice,” she says sweetly, “but I’m pretty sure she has never felt it.”

“Traitor,” Holtzmann looks up at her friend, gasping for air despite the present reprieve. 

Hmmmm. Erin’s hand _is_ starting to ache. She takes the leather implement and examines it, running it over her girlfriend’s glowing red skin. 

“Great,” Holtzmann grumbles. 

“I’m not sure I like your tone,” Erin drags the crop across the small of Holtzmann’s back. 

“I’m not sure I like the _whip_ in your hand,” Holtzmann retorts weakly. 

Erin bites back a smile, because you really do have to admire the tinkerer’s pluck, and snaps the instrument across the center of her ass. 

The riding crop produces a sharp, intense sting, which has Holtzmann moaning instantaneously. But it doesn’t cover much ground, so Erin decides to swing it light and fast—borrowing a bit from Holtzmann’s caning technique. She works her way up and down her target while fighting to keep Holtzmann’s wriggling form on her lap. 

Holtzmann wasn’t expecting Erin to wield that crop like such a boss. She knows nothing but the rise and fall of the leather against her skin. There is no room in her agony-drunk consciousness for thoughts of Ollie, Saul, or anyone else watching her misadventure. 

Erin keeps this level of intensity steady until Holtzmann goes limp. She slows the pace of her blows when she feels the engineer’s dash evaporate, spacing them out to give her girlfriend a chance to catch her breath. 

Holtzmann realizes that she had been rubbing against Erin’s knee vigorously while trying to swim off of her lap. In her desperation to escape the bite of the crop, she hadn’t noticed the heat building between her legs. 

She is acutely aware of it now. And of the number of people observing her undoing. Her cheeks redden as she notes just how submissive she must look. 

But she is, as Erin has observed, impossible to punish. 

She doesn’t plan to ever end up in this position again, but the humiliation and the sting of Erin’s slow strokes, mingled with the contact between her clit and the physicist’s knee has her dripping. 

It only takes a few more swats to send her into ecstasy. 

It’s a challenge—to keep an orgasm this intense invisible—but she tries not to let the pleasure show on her face as she comes against Erin’s knee. 

Erin feels the evidence seep onto her bare skin, and wonders if Holtzmann actually just—

“Cattywampus,” the blonde moans quietly, for Erin’s ears only. 

Yes. Yes, she definitely did.

Erin swallows the laughter that threatens to bubble up and out of her, because goddamn her girlfriend is something else, and delivers one last very hard stroke to her marked backside. 

She flips Holtzmann up onto her feet, tugging her pants back up. Her girlfriend clings to her, wobbly kneed and blushing.

Erin takes in the faces of the people surrounding them, and stands up a little straighter when she realizes that they look really freaking impressed. 

She now understands Holtzmann’s cockiness following Ollie’s caning intrinsically. She could probably top all of these fuckers with one hand tied behind her back. It’d have to be her left hand, she notes, but she could do it. Leave all of them quivering like the engineer, who is peering up at her knowingly. 

Very knowingly. 

Oh.

“Jillian Holtzmann,” she hisses, “did you do this on purpose?”

The blonde tries to keep her face impassive, but her dimples give her away. 

“Go wait in there,” Erin pushes the little shit towards the nearest private nook, running her hand over her face in disbelief. 

Holtzmann isn’t sure if she is in more or less trouble now, but she scrambles to the back of the room obediently, grateful to have the opportunity to untangle the rest of this in private. 

Saul and Ollie intercept Erin on her path to join Holtzmann.

“Do you make house calls?” Saul pokes Ollie, “because this one could probably benefit from some time with you.”

Erin laughs freely as she wipes the sweat on her forehead off with the back of her hand. 

“That was incredible,” he says sincerely, “Jilly-Bean is a lucky woman.”

“Or a really unlucky one,” Ollie says with a grin. 

Erin blushes, because she is an easily embarrassed, lanky, soft-spoken badass of a top. And that’s okay. 

She finds Holtzmann lying on her stomach on a bench behind the curtain. 

The redhead moves to stand over her girlfriend. 

Holtzmann looks up at her with apprehension, and Erin realizes that she is wondering if she is going to be spanked again.

“I just want to sit down,” she clarifies evenly. 

Holtz lifts her torso so that Erin can slide her legs underneath her. She is relieved when the physicist gently rubs her back, taking that as an invitation to wrap her arms around her girlfriend and melt into her. 

“You were so mad,” the engineer murmurs into Erin’s stomach. 

“I was so frightened when that guy grabbed you,” Erin sighs, “that was really dangerous, Holtzmann. You scare the shit out of me enough on busts, when you are armed—”

“I know,” Holtzmann looks up at Erin, “I thought he was too drunk to hurt me.”

“You were wrong.”

“The best laid plans,” Holtzmann shrugs sheepishly, “I’m really sorry.”

Erin nods and places a kiss on the engineer’s forehead. 

“Terror aside,” she muses, “I can’t decide if your little scheme is the sweetest or the most infuriating thing anyone has ever done for me.”

“My vote is definitely for sweet but I’m am probably biased,” Holtz stretches her legs, “I knew you could do it; you just needed some encouragement. Holtzmann Style.” 

“Only you could build me up by thoroughly pissing me off.”

The blonde beams up at Erin, looking far more angelic than she has any right to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been playing with this and editing it all day. It's been a struggle, 'cause it's a little unwieldy! So I'm just taking the plunge and posting it. If you see any glaring errors, feel free to point them out and I'll take care of them. 
> 
> Okay. So...where to gumshoe? I've gotten a couple of requests for top!Holtz. What else are you feeling?


	8. Erin and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day trip.  Pt. 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright. I'm putting the chapter notes up here as a warning: 
> 
> This is all set up. Very little plot. No kink. 
> 
> Those last two things are coming. I swear.
> 
> So...here is the fifteen pages of Erin backstory and introspection that no one asked for, and that I *really* didn't set out to write. 
> 
> You can berate me on Tumblr if that is your thing:
> 
> tenureisfordudes.tumblr.com
> 
> Special thanks to A.M. for attempting to make sense of this with me.

When Erin was sixteen, she kissed a girl. And she liked it. Abby did not taste like cherry chapstick, but she must have put something on her lips, because they were soft and they left a pleasant waxy residue on Erin’s when she pulled away. 

They were just practicing--readying themselves for the dozens of freshmen and sophomores who were smitten by their ghost stories and straight A’s. 

Erin went for a walk that night, running her finger over her lips as she logged miles and ignored the bite of the cold night air. 

She arrived home four hours after her curfew. 

Her mother was waiting on the couch, arms folded and face white. 

“Where in the world have you been, Erin Marie?”

Erin burst into tears. 

“I think I like girls,” she choked out. 

“That is all well and good,” her mother said matter-of-factly, “but it does not explain why you just walked in the door at one A.M. on a school night.”

Lana Gilbert has many points of contention with her only daughter, but her bisexuality is not one. 

So that isn’t why Holtzmann is tinkering back in New York while Erin sits on the guest bed in her mother’s museum of a house in New Haven.

After her father died three years ago, her mother took a job in administration at Albertus Magnus College. Erin let herself hope for a brief moment that the move to Connecticut may have been sparked by a desire to spend more time with her, but the two rarely saw each other, even with the close proximity. 

Erin was surprised when her mother called her two days ago. She should have known that it wasn’t just to check in. There was a ghost in her house, she had said, with no trace of the diffidence the woman probably should have demonstrated. 

She has yet to acknowledge, despite her daughter’s newfound fame as a Ghostbuster, that Ghost Girl was probably telling the truth all those years. 

“Could you maybe not bring the whole motley crew with you,” Lana had asked, “I know that you enjoy having all eyes on you, but I would prefer to keep this issue in the family.”

Erin closes her eyes as she remembers the reproach; it is the same old tune in a different key. 

Erin had liked wearing dresses and bows as a little girl, but she was also an energetic, uncultivated child who wore her scrapes and bruises like Girl Scout merit badges. She flung herself out of trees, slid down steep hills, and climbed every scalable surface within a mile radius of her house. 

It was fun. The other kids thought that she was nervy, which made her feel cool. And when she returned home with some new abrasion to show for her efforts, her mother would sweep her up into her arms and carry her to the bathroom. There she would gently clean and dress her daughter’s wounds, telling Erin how brave she was for not flinching or wiggling. 

Lana Gilbert was not the warmest mother, but those nursing sessions always ended with a gentle kiss on Erin’s forehead—and Erin liked the way that made her heart feel. 

Kyle Gilbert died when Erin was eight. She hadn’t spent a lot of time with him, because no self-respecting older brother would be seen with a skinny kid sister three years his junior. But Erin missed his wisecracks and baseball games and the way he begrudgingly approved of her ability to beat anyone at Mancala.

“It was just math,” she had whispered, her eyes closed in front of his open casket, “you had to count the pebbles.”

Erin didn’t look at her brother at all during the service. So she didn’t see the gash on his right hand—the only external injury from the car accident that took his young life. But her mother had it memorized. She had pulled the piece of windshield glass out herself as Kyle lay completely still in the hospital, surrounded by empty IVs and silent monitors. 

Erin didn’t understand her mother’s reaction when she landed herself in the hospital four weeks later, having sliced into her palm with a Swiss army knife while cutting branches to build a fort. Lana’s expression turned to ice upon seeing the laceration on her daughter’s hand. 

“If this is your way of acting out—of getting our attention, I refuse to play into it. How dare you bring me back here—knowing that this is where Kyle took his last breath.”

Erin vowed to never get injured again. She stopped playing outside. She retreated into books and academics, cultivating her abundance of energy into competitions and projects. She started collecting good grades the way she had bruises and scrapes. Straight A’s guaranteed her a pat on the head, and maybe a quick one-armed hug. 

Lana’s hair went from a vibrant red to white in the year that followed. 

Erin’s dad, the softhearted of the two, started drinking.

Erin watched her mom care for her dad with compassion, seeing him into and out of rehabilitation centers and AA meetings. She was gentle when he relapsed, and he always did, telling him that she knew how much he missed Kyle. Holding him as he sobbed on the couch. Rubbing his back as he vomited after a binge. 

Her mother lobbied to change the signs on the curve of road where Kyle’s best friend’s mother lost control of her car.

She always took the time to assure the poor woman that the accident was not her fault—that she didn’t blame her. 

There is a lot to admire about Lana Gilbert, as austere as she is. This is rattles Erin every time they interact. She could have written off a mere disinterested, cold mother years ago. But it is hard to not care what a paradigm of perseverance thinks of you. 

Erin’s crackpot of a therapist diagnosed her as attention starved and manipulative at the age of eight. Probably related to the death of her brother, he told her parents. 

The loss of Kyle still so fresh, Lana found it hard to sympathize with the growing list of seemingly insignificant things that Erin was struggling with. The therapist told her that she didn’t need to: “playing into her games will only make things worse.”

So Lana assumed that every mistake that Erin made and misstep that she took was a calculated attempt at shining the spotlight back on her.

Punching a boy in the face for calling her father a drunk. 

Punching a boy in the face for telling her that her brother was in hell.

Punching a boy in the face for—

Okay, Erin punched a lot of people in the face. It is a habit she has yet to totally break, as evidenced by her interaction with the blogger who told her she belonged in therapy. She is sure that her mother just loved seeing her forty two year old daughter’s combative face splashed across the tabloids. 

Erin also drew macabre pictures in art.

And in the sixth grade she wrote a story about a young girl who jumped in front of a train. 

She failed gym in the eighth grade because she refused to take part for two months. Her mother didn’t know that Erin was nursing a sprained ankle; she just thought that she was taking some kind of stubborn stand.

And of course there was the whole business about the ghost at the foot of her bed.

Now there is another ghost. It isn’t in the guest room right now. The specter only manifests at night, Lana had explained, clanking behind the walls and knocking her expensive paintings to the floor.

The first rule in the official Ghostbusters Handbook (that Erin herself penned) is that busting is a team sport. There must be at least two respondents per call. This is for a variety of scientifically sound, safety-based reasons, which are explained in the footnotes that no one but Erin has read.

It hadn't just been her mother’s request to keep this situation quiet that had Erin sneaking one of Holtzmann’s new miniature proton packs out of the firehouse and assuring the gang that she was just going on a quick day trip to New Haven. 

Erin really, really likes Erin 2.0—the woman that has developed through kicking ass, and supportive friendships, and kissing Holtzmann. 

She busts ghosts with accuracy and precision. 

She doesn’t shake during press appearances anymore, even without the liquid courage that Holtzmann once slipped into her coffee before an interview. (Word to the wise: Irish Cream liquor tastes just like Irish Cream coffee creamer.) 

Public opinion is that she is reserved, but articulate and likable. When she isn’t punching people.

She gives advice that is sound, words of wisdom that her friends genuinely want to hear—and occasionally, they actually listen.

She is loyal, and dependable, and funny, and she knows exactly how to give her girlfriend what she needs—even when those needs bind and sting.

Her newfound assuredness was evident in the way her stomach didn’t lurch when she saw her mother’s name on her caller I.D. 

It is easier to accept that she isn’t solely to blame for their brambly kinship when she has people who look at her the way Patty, Abby, Holtzmann, and even Kevin do. 

She didn’t pause before every sentence during their conversation, examining each thought to ensure that it was lucid and unobtrusive. 

So she thinks that maybe this is it: the opportunity to talk to her mother as a fully formed, adult woman. Perhaps she can finally do something more than defer and appease. 

She feels up to it now, and she has never felt that way before. 

But Erin will always see herself as the person reflected in others’ eyes. It is one of the traits that she has learned to embrace in her path to self-acceptance. It’s not always a flaw—it pushes her to be the best version of herself, and these days she tends to like what she sees. 

She would, however, prefer not to witness her own unraveling through the expressions of her friends.  
And strong as she has been feeling, her mother is a landmine of uncertainty and self-doubt.

So she is sitting in her mother’s house alone, choosing not to think about how this chapter of her story will end, because whatever happens with her mom, the people she left in the dark in New York are not going to be happy. 

Holtzmann is not going to be happy.

But she isn’t thinking about that. 

Not.

Thinking.

About—

The bed dips as Lana sits down next to her.

“How is work?”

“Great,” Erin stares at the ceiling instead of her mother, “very fulfilling.”

“You know, you could probably teach again,” Lana leans against the bed’s headboard, “you have some impressive field experience. Between that and your academic accomplishments—”

“I’m pretty happy just being a Ghostbuster.” 

“Well, if you want to settle for ‘pretty happy.’”

Erin doesn’t tell her mom that this is the happiest she has ever been. Instead, she props herself up on one elbow and asks: “how is your job?”

“Very fulfilling,” Lana says with the tiniest hint of a smile.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes, every snow day closure decision fills me with a real sense of purpose.”

“Seriously,” Erin’s eyes widen, “that’s what the associate dean of academic affairs does?”

“I have a lot of power.” 

The physicist tries to fill the silence that falls over them with something pleasant: “the chili was good.” 

“I’m glad you liked it,” Lana says, “do you cook for your friends?”

“Yeah,” Erin nods, “I’m still not much of a chef, but they would live on takeout and Doritos if I didn’t occasionally throw something together.”

“The woman you are seeing—”

“Jillian,” Erin supplies. 

“Jillian,” Holtzmann’s first name sounds particularly foreign on her mother’s lips, “she doesn’t cook?”

Erin feels like she is suffocating in this small talk. Thirty-four years of insignificant conversation with her mother has been more than enough. And she doesn’t want to talk about Holtzmann, because the guilt and dread in her stomach have mixed to form acid. It’s getting harder to ignore the burning.

So she doesn’t answer. 

“Erin?”

Erin doesn’t have a plan or a tactic in mind. She isn’t after apologies or explanations. She just wants to connect— to know that the woman sitting in front of her sees her. 

“Do you want to visit Kyle?” 

The question lumbers in the air.

Lana’s expression changes, and Erin recognizes the first step in her procedure for frosting-over. 

“You are free to visit your brother whenever you want,” the older woman says. 

“I know,” Erin says, “I just thought that maybe we could go together.”

“Why?”

Erin sighs. 

“We haven’t done that in years, I thought it might be nice.”

“I remember when going to the cemetery was a mother-sanctioned chore for you.”

“It was never a chore.”

“You treated it like it was.”

“I was a child,” Erin tries not to raise her voice, “I had trouble understanding the significance of the ritual.”

Erin is relieved—silly as it is, given that she came here with the intention of having a conversation just like this one—when there is a restive rattling in the wall behind her. 

“There it is,” Lana says, jumping up and looking as close to bewildered as she is physically capable. 

“I’ve got to get my equipment,” Erin says as she stands, “I’m going to run out to the car.”

She grasps her mother’s hand, starting to lead her out of the room, when she notices that the ghost is tittering.

“Does it always make that noise?” Erin asks, moving closer to the wall. 

“Yes, like it’s kind of laughing?”

Erin knows that she shouldn’t be investigating without a Holtzmann-approved weapon, but something is off. She follows the sound as it moves from one wall to another, settling near the room’s totally unnecessary fireplace.

There is scratching now, too—scratching and tittering. 

Erin takes a deep breath and peers up into the chimney flue. It’s dark, and difficult to see, and she is about to ask her mother if she has a flashlight handy, when suddenly a dark, cloudy form comes swirling towards her. 

As she is engulfed in the murky fog, her mother screams.

Erin wipes her eyes and tries to get her bearings—knowing that she has to act fast if she is going to protect her mother from whatever just flew out of the flue. 

She takes in her surroundings. 

Her mother is paralyzed in fear, staring in horror at a raccoon. 

A fat, tittering, scratching raccoon. 

“Who ya gonna call?” Erin murmurs as she tries to shake some of the soot off of her hands. She charges toward the raccoon, determined to bust something.

It doesn’t run. It hisses at her and slowly maneuvers its bovine body backwards out of the room. 

Erin sighs, and essentially escorts the creature through the kitchen and out the back door, leaving a trail of dusty human and animal paw prints throughout her mother’s house. 

She feels like a petulant sixteen-year-old when she stands in front of her mother again. 

“Mom.”

“I guess sometimes the most simple explanation is the correct one,” Lana shrugs.

“I’m going to shower, and then we can finish our conversation.”

“Is that necessary?” 

“Yes. Unless you want everything you own to be covered in this stuff.”

“No,” Lana sighs, “I mean continuing our conversation.”

“Oh,” and just like that Erin feels three feet tall. 

“It’s just,” Lana folds her arms over her chest, “there is no ghost. I’ll call an exterminator. You can get back to your girlfriend—”

“Jillian.”

“You can get back to Jillian, and I’ll get this place cleaned up.”

“I didn’t just come here to bust the ghost,” Erin coughs, inhaling the black powder that has settled on her skin.

“I know.” 

Lana’s expression actually contains a smidgen of sympathy, and for second Erin is hopeful.

“You do?”

“Erin,” Lana takes a step towards her daughter, “we have what we have, and that’s okay. A mother-daughter trip to the cemetery is not going to make it more than it is.”

Erin doesn’t scream, even though she really wants to. 

She can’t do anything with that. They could trace the root of their mutual confusion. Yell until their anger dissipates. Cry about their conflicting coping mechanisms. 

But Erin cannot fix indifference. She cannot make her mother want to know her.

Her phone buzzes, vibrating on the nightstand where she had set it down when she first arrived. 

Seven missed calls and eight texts. 

Great.

Erin lied and stole, and she has nothing to show for it. No resolution on the mother front. No busted ghost. Just a thick layer of soot, which may or may not be worse than ectoplasm, and a dull ache in her chest.

The most recent text is from Abby. 

_ABBY: Really, Erin? Did you think Holtzmann wouldn’t notice that one of her babies was missing? She has a sixth sense._

There is no use delaying inevitable.

_ERIN: I’ll call her and explain._

Erin looks up to tell her mother that she will soon be out of her hair, but the older woman has already left the room. 

_ABBY: First, go take a look at that proton pack._

Erin’s nose scrunches in confusion as she reads and then rereads Abby’s text. The proton pack was in the trunk of her car—she knows what it looks like. Still, she jogs down the stairs and opens the front door, intending to figure out what is unique about that particular piece of equipment. 

Her stomach drops. 

Holtzmann is leaning on the car, holding the mini-proton pack, having inexplicably managed to open the car’s trunk. 

She takes in the curve of her girlfriend’s tense jaw, the flared nostrils, and the quiet fire behind her eyes. 

This is what an angry Holtzmann looks like.

“Where’s the ghost?” The engineer asks, unsettlingly calm. She doesn’t comment on the fact that the physicist is covered in charcoal. 

“There isn’t one,” Erin says quietly, wondering if somehow that statement will suffice. 

Holtzmann continues to stare at her.

Erin doesn’t know what to do with her hands. Or her feet. Her whole body feels out of place and graceless under Holtzmann’s gaze. 

Holtz pushes herself away from the vehicle with her foot, her trench coat swirling behind her as she stalks towards Erin.

“So you just kidnapped my tiny, adorable miniature proton pack as a precaution?”

It’s a nice out that Holtzmann has just given her, and that would have been an oddly Erin thing to do, but the redhead is tired of ambiguity. 

“It was a raccoon.” 

“The ghost was a raccoon?” 

“Yes.”

“The ghost of a raccoon?”

“No,” Erin studies her shoes, “an actual raccoon.”

Holtzmann’s eyebrow quirks. 

“My mom thought that there was a ghost in her house, but it was just a raccoon that was living in her wall.”

“But you came here to bust a ghost.”

“Yes.”

“Alone.”

“Yes.”

Holtzmann sweeps past Erin.

“Holtz,” Erin tries to grab for her. 

“I have to pee,” the engineer says, marching into Erin’s mother’s house like she owns the place.

Erin starts to follow, but she stops when she hears a car door close behind her. She turns to see Patty and Abby walking up the driveway.

Of course the whole gang came. They thought she was up against—

“There is no ghost, guys. Just a raccoon.”

Abby and Patty don’t ask for more information. Nor do they launch into the volley of harsh words that Erin expects, given that these two ladies do not suffer fools.

Patty just laughs.

“We should be mad as hell,” the tallest Ghostbuster says.

“But Holtzmann’s got that covered,” Abby says with sympathy.

Erin casts a glance toward the front door. Her mother is standing in the doorway now, holding Erin's purse, with a questioning expression on her face. 

She probably wants to know who the strange woman peeing in her house is. 

Erin doesn’t tell her. She takes her purse and returns to Abby and Patty.

Holtzmann exits, offering Lana a matter of fact “hello,” as she passes her. 

“What would you like us to do?” She asks Erin, her expression unreadable. 

“There is nothing to bust,” Erin says softly.

Erin is too busy staring at her hands to see the looks exchanged between her three friends. 

“You gonna stay here?” Holtz gestures towards the house. 

“I want to go home,” Erin starts towards her car, noting that her mom has slipped back inside without a word, and wearing deflation like a fashion accessory. 

“Baby,” Patty grips her shoulder, “you look beat—why don’t you let me drive your car back? You go with Holtzy and Abby.”

Erin looks at Abby, who nods encouragingly. 

“Okay.” 

Erin crawls into backseat of the car the Ghostbusters arrived in. She curls into herself, trying to take up as little space as possible. 

Holtzmann feels far away when she slides into the other side of the car. 

Abby doesn’t seem to mind that she is playing chauffer. 

The tears forming in the corners of Erin’s eyes feel thick and viscous. She knows that her mother would dismiss them as a cry for attention. She doesn’t want her girlfriend to feel in any way obligated to comfort her, after all Holtz has a right to be angry, so she turns toward the window before letting them fall. 

Erin is an award-winning physicist, but she has always struggled with the physical properties of doors and windows. She tries to slide open doors that do not slide. She struggles to open doors that are not clearly labeled. She once tried to stick her head through a window that wasn’t open. So she is unaware that her woebegone expression is reflected in the glass, and that Holtzmann is watching her struggle.

The engineer reaches over and grabs a handful of Erin’s shirt, clumsily yanking her across the middle seat. Erin’s sooty, snotty, tear-stained face crashes into her shoulder. 

Erin stiffens, unsure of what to make of the sudden contact. Holtzmann slips a hand under her shirt, splaying her palm onto the small of Erin’s back. Erin’s body relaxes, responding to the familiar feeling of her girlfriend’s bare flesh against her own.


	9. Erin and the terrible, horrible, no good very bad day trip Pt. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very brief bridge chapter. I'm still playing around with and editing this arc's final installment.

The feeling of forward locomotion and the sound of a radio on low have always put Holtzmann to sleep. An extended car ride is one of the few things that slows the processing speed of her ever-concocting brain. 

The frenzied journey to New Haven had been anything but relaxing. The engineer doesn’t remember much between the moment she realized that Erin took a proton pack on her trip, and her relief when her tracker indicated that the weapon was sitting unused in the trunk of her girlfriend’s car. 

Holtzmann installed trackers on all of her inventions, coincidentally at Erin’s insistence. Her toys are powerful, and in the wrong hands they could be exceptionally dangerous. 

Exceptionally dangerous like attempting to bust a ghost on your own, 85.5 miles away from anyone who could provide backup. 

Holtzmann grunts.

It sounds like something she would do. She acknowledges the hypocrisy inherent in her anger. But that doesn’t soothe the seething in her chest, which intensifies every time she pictures her frangible girlfriend standing before a ghost that doesn’t care that Erin has partner who _needs_ her to be safe, warm, and in her bed every night.

Erin is still tucked against her shoulder. She hasn’t moved since Holtzmann roughly placed her there. But Holtzmann can feel the oscillation in the physicist’s pretty head. She thinks that Erin’s internal gears are probably grinding, propelling the redhead towards ripping herself to shreds. 

She is right, of course. Erin is silently berating herself, painstakingly going through every stupid decision made from the moment that her mother called through her discovery of a pissed Holtzmann leaning against her car. 

The two scientists’ fretful inner monologues are interrupted about an hour into their long journey home, when Abby pulls into a rest area. She needs caffeine and something to chew. 

Holtzmann and Erin stay in the backseat, sitting in forlorn silence. 

Holtz can’t live like this, but she is struggling to string together an opening statement that is both comforting and appropriately reproachful. 

“Hello, Erin.” 

That works too. 

“Hi,” Erin’s reply is barely audible. She doesn’t glance up. 

“You ever gonna look at me again?”

Erin’s chin trembles (totally unfair, Holtzmann thinks) as she slowly raises her eyes. They look especially blue against the soot covering her nose and cheeks, and Holtzmann sees exactly what she was expecting to see within them.

“You want me to punish you.” It isn’t a question, but if it were, the way that Erin bites her lip would be an answer in  
the affirmative. 

This is complicated.

It isn’t that Holtzmann never thinks about spanking Erin. She does. These daydreams usually involve pushing Erin over a table in her lab and dolling out some swift justice in response to one of the physicist’s adorably haughty comments. But this Erin, the one tucked into her side, is lacking in anything that would inspire Holtzmann to take her down a notch. Hell, as angry Holtzmann is, she isn’t even sure that she could properly yell at her. 

“I don’t want you to feel like you have to do this,” Holtzmann pulls Erin up, not wanting to have this conversation while looking down at her, “to even the score, or to make up for pilfering my precious proton pack and deciding to bust as an army of one—”

“I don’t.” Erin sounds self-assured, though her eyes lower at the description of her crimes. “You would never ask me to do that.”

Holtzmann is relieved that Erin knows this, and that the source of her tears and hesitancy isn’t insecurity in the current standing of their relationship. 

Well, the engineer is never one to stand down from a challenge, and she knows that if she doesn’t punish Erin, Erin will punish herself. And it will be prolonged and painful. The redhead has only recently stopped forcing herself to watch the YouTube capture of Abby’s appearance on that talk show the day that Erin “officially abandoned her.”

“If we do this, you cannot be a backseat driver.” Holtzmann’s tone is unswayable, “the session won’t work if you’re questioning my choices because you still have your top hat on.” She grimaces, “and you should probably spank me for that pun tomorrow. Not up to my usual standard.”

Holtzmann can’t help but be pleased when Erin smiles. She wants Erin smiling in perpetuum, even when she is in hot water. Even as Holtz is resigning herself to making sure that her girlfriend never does anything like this ever again.

“I understand,” Erin nods intently. “When we get home, I’d like to tell you what I was thinking. I don’t want to make excuses, I just—”

“Oh, you’ll explain yourself,” Holtzmann’s voice takes on an unfamiliar air of authority, “and I’ll listen attentively before I decide exactly what I’m going to do with you.” 

Erin’s heart flutters.

Abby returns, tossing a couple of Gatorades into the backseat before starting the car’s engine. 

Holtzmann opens the fruit punch flavored drink and offers it to Erin, who takes a few sips under her girlfriend’s watchful gaze. 

The physicist looks reasonably disquieted.

“Erin,” Holtzmann opens her arms, “why don’t you give that big beautiful brain of yours a rest? We’ve got long _discussion_ ahead of us, and I want you alert and aware.”

Erin inhales sharply before settling back against Holtzmann. The sound is cuter than it should be, and Holtzmann realizes that she is going to have to continuously remind herself that her wayward string bean is deservedly in a world of trouble. 

Abby shoots Erin a sympathetic look in the rearview mirror. 

Erin resists the urge to tell her best friend that she has _no idea_.


	10. Erin and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day trip.  Pt. 3

Two hours later, the gang is back at headquarters. Abby and Patty are in their respective rooms, and Erin is soot-free and sitting on a table in Holtzmann’s lab, clad in an oversized tee-shirt, her legs tucked under her.

She is giving Holtz, who is sitting on a chair in front of the table, a play-by-play of the last two days. She is not leaving out any details—including the painful, embarrassing memories that not even Abby is privy to. Her biggest regret in this whole mess, though she acknowledges that it should be the attempt-at-taking-a ghost-on-her-own-thing, is that she distanced herself from Holtzmann in an attempt to cope. She knows how hurt she would be if Holtzmann pulled away from her. 

So she is carefully removing the top layer of her skin, because she doesn’t need its protective qualities when she is breathing the same air as Holtzmann. 

Holtzmann already has the outline of these snippets from Erin’s life, but the particulars are tugging at her heart. She inches closer to Erin as her tale progresses, and soon she is sitting next to the redhead with her hand on her girlfriend’s knee.

Erin gets to the bit about the fat raccoon, and her mother’s indifferent rejection, before finally stopping to reflect.

“My ridiculous pipedream was that I was going to get there, show my mom that I was more than just an attention seeking nuisance by busting a ghost, because I’d be in my element, and that would impress her,” her chest tightens, “and then we’d have a moment and I could feel like she saw me—” 

“Breathe, Erin.” Holtzmann whispers in her ear.

Erin does, leaning into the gentle contact. 

“I think I knew that it wasn’t going to happen like that. That’s why I didn’t want you there. Because I didn’t want to fail in front of you, and have you look at me like I was back at square one.”

“Square one of what?”

“Erin. Me.”

“Well, Square One Erin Gilbert is still light-years ahead of most of the poor saps who populate this planet.” Holtzmann places her hand on Erin's cheek, “and is the way I’m looking at you so bad?”

“It’s worse,” Erin sniffles, “because you aren’t looking at me like I’m a disappointment _at all,_ even though you're pissed. And that is further proof that I made all of the wrong choices. I should’ve taken you with me. Because of the ghost, yes. But also because I’m always stronger when I’m with you. And all I wanted when my mom said that she didn’t want to try to work on us was to hold your hand. But instead, I screwed up and I made you worry, and, God, you’re being so much nicer to me than I deserve.”

“You are so much more than the sum of the mistakes you make,” Holtz leans her forehead against Erin’s, “this colossal fuck up doesn’t mean that you’ve retrogressed. Got that?”

Erin nods. 

“But it was colossal, buttercup. I’d make you sit and copy our entire handbook if you weren’t the one who wrote it.”

“Really, pages twenty three through eighty four are the relevant sections,” Erin offers helpfully. 

“See. So you know all of the ways that a solo bust can go wrong. You also took a weapon you’ve never used before. We haven’t tested the minis yet.”

Erin winces, “I thought you’d be less likely to notice that it was missing.”

“I appreciate your honesty,” Holtzmann sighs, “and usually I appreciate the way you don’t half-ass anything, but you could’ve slacked a little on this snafu, babe. You really went full force.”

“I know,” Erin draws her knees to her chest. 

“You scared the ever loving shit out of me. I really like knowing where you are and what you’re doing. And not just physically—your brain was doing some serious emotional acrobatics, and I had no clue.” 

Erin’s devastating chin tremble makes another appearance, and Holtzmann isn’t a monster, so she wraps her arms around her girlfriend.

“You tell me when you’re ready,” the engineer says softly. 

“I’d like to get this taken care of,” Erin says after a moment, “what should I do?”

Holtzmann slides off the table, and takes a seat on the chair she was sitting in earlier. She crooks a finger at Erin, who swings her legs over the edge. 

“Step right up.”

Despite her oversized shirt, the physicist feels exposed as she moves to stand pigeon toed in front of Holtzmann. The blonde is sitting like an oblivious man on the 1 train, legs spread to give the junk she doesn’t have room to breathe. If she is at all nervous about their reversal, she isn’t showing it. She hooks her a leg around Erin’s knees, pulling her over her lap.

Erin isn’t sure if it is submission-jitters or the blood rushing to her head, but she feels dizzy. 

Holtzmann gently pushes the fabric of Erin’s shirt out of the way, and Erin involuntarily shudders as her girlfriend tugs her cotton underwear down and then off. 

In a gesture that is both tender and a definite show of dominance, Holtzmann places a hand on the small of Erin’s back. She raises the other above her head, and brings it down onto Erin’s ass. 

“Ouch,” Erin sounds almost surprised, as if it somehow hadn’t occurred to her that being spanked _hurts_. 

“Unfortunate side effect,” Holtz chuckles. Her first instinct is to immediately rub away the sting, but then she mentally reviews all of the terrible things that could have happened if Erin had come up against more than a raccoon. She brings her hand down again. 

Erin learns that Holtzmann is a slow, methodical spanker. She smacks the same place several times before moving on, and she pauses between each swat to let the sensation really sink in before she strikes again. 

Holtzmann learns that, despite her initial outcry, Erin is a very stoic spankee. She endures the thwacks and whomps in silent resignation, barely moving. The only indication the redhead gives that she is uncomfortable is the way she is gripping the engineer’s ankle like it is her lifeline. 

If they were playing, Holtzmann would probably push her by striking harder or faster, throwing her girlfriend off balance and making her squeal. But she knows that Erin isn’t ready to delight in the pain. She needs to feel chastened, like she has atoned, before she will give herself over to pleasure. We’ll get there, Holtzmann thinks, as she continues in the same steady rhythm, building a light but sharp sting. 

Erin isn’t moving, but she is sweating. Holtzmann is now spanking her with just enough force to make her feel as if she can’t take much more. Like she is standing on the edge of the firehouse roof, swaying backwards and forewords without falling or finding her footing. But the swats keep _coming,_ and with each one she realizes that she can, in fact, take more. The physicist wiggles her fingers and toes, and reminds herself that she has earned every blow. She is determined not to fight her girlfriend. She focuses on acceding to the pain, letting it wash over her, while also wondering if she has been over Holtzmann’s knee for an hour.

She hasn’t. It’s been about ten minutes. But that is, Holtzmann notes, a long time to spend under someone’s hand. She can feel her girlfriend acquiesce to the discomfort; Erin’s muscles go slack under her. 

Holtzmann stops and places her left hand, which is cool with inactivity, on the back of Erin’s neck. 

“How are you doing, sweet pea?”

Erin whimpers in response to Holtzmann’s gentleness. 

“That wasn’t enough,” she says, shying away from her girlfriend’s touch.

Erin finds herself back on her feet, with Holtzmann’s nose pressed against hers. 

“Who decides when you’ve had enough?”

The redhead realizes her mistake instantly, and in what Holtzmann considers to be staggering show of submission, removes her damp shirt and leans against Holtzmann, letting the blonde bear the full brunt of her weight. 

“You do.”

Holtzmann snakes an arm around Erin’s waist and places her lips against her ear. “Better,” she says, “and we are definitely not done.”

Erin gets those particular, be-careful-what-you-wish-for-butterflies in her stomach as Holtzmann pulls her over to a table that is usually covered with an assortment of tools. 

Now it is covered in the various implements that the two scientists have amassed. Most came with Holtz, but Erin has added a few to the collection. There are multiple canes, paddles made out of various materials, a riding crop, and a tawse. 

Holtzmann grabs the smallest cane and guides Erin back to the center of the room. 

Erin can’t decide if the mental image she has of Holtzmann caning Ollie is comforting or nerve-racking. 

“Bend over here for me,” Holtzmann gestures to the table in front of them. 

Erin nods and obeys. But something shifts when the cold metal of the table hits her abdomen. It feels almost clinical, and suddenly Holtzmann seems far away. She has been in almost constant physical contact with the engineer since they climbed into the car together in New Haven. The idea of enduring the cane without that security makes her mouth dry. 

She tells herself that she deserves to feel alone and scared, colossal fuck up and all, but then she remembers that trying to brave challenges without Holtzmann is what got her into this mess. 

And Erin Gilbert learns from her mistakes. 

“Freeze,” she says softly. 

Erin’s safe word, like Erin, is more conventional than Holtzmann’s. But it does the job just the same, and in an instant Holtzmann is sitting on the table and pulling Erin up onto her lap.

“Hey,” the blonde places a kiss on Erin’s temple, “talk to me.”

Erin is too relieved to speak. Holtzmann’s energy is solar, radiant and invigorating, and the physicist closes her eyes and draws from her girlfriend’s reserve.

“Are you afraid of the cane?”

“No. God, it’s stupid.”

“Erin,” Holtzmann pokes her girlfriend’s side, “you’re in enough trouble. Don’t go insulting my favorite humanoid’s intelligence.”

“I felt lonely,” Erin grips the fabric of Holtzmann’s shirt, “because we weren’t touching.”

Holtzmann nuzzles Erin’s neck. “You want to take a break and cuddle?”

“No,” Erin shakes her head vehemently, “I want to keep going. You can cane me. I just need you to, like—”

“Hold you while I do it?” 

“Could you?”

“You got it.”

“Thanks,” Erin sighs, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to ruin your momentum.”

“No. I’m so glad you said something,” Holtzmann brushes her fingers through her girlfriend’s hair, “that’s not easy to do, my brave girl.”

Erin flushes at the compliment, and woah, Holtzmann makes note of just how lovely the warmth looks on her cheeks. She files that image away for later as she stands up. She puts a knee up on the chair and flips Erin over it. She wraps one arm around her girlfriend’s waist. 

“Comfortable?”

Erin doesn’t comment on the irony of that question, instead she just says “yes.”

“I’m going to give you five strokes,” Holtzmann explains, “and I want you to count them for me. I won’t move onto the next one until you say the number, so you take as much time as you need in between.”

“Okay.”

Holtzmann thrashes the cane across Erin’s ass. When applied at full force, the cane can be devastating, so Holtzmann is careful to just flick her wrist. Even that controlled motion leaves a red line where the implement touches Erin’s skin. 

“One,” Erin says quickly, before the sting has even settled. 

Holtzmann gives her another stroke, right below the first one. 

“Two,” Erin is running on adrenaline, and Holtzmann knows that her girlfriend is not going to be able to keep up this pace. 

When the engineer strikes again, the intensity of the burn left by all three strokes catches up with the redhead. The pain is searing, and before she has time to accurately categorize the sensation, she is crying. 

Holtzmann brushes her hand over the slightly raised marks left by the cane, hoping that Erin’s tears are an indication of catharsis. 

“Three,” Erin says through gritted teeth. 

Holtzmann snaps the cane down, this time on the lower part of Erin’s ass. Erin yelps, but she remains in place, which Holtzmann finds impressive given the state of her reddened skin. She sets the implement down and runs the tips of her fingers over the four lines. 

Erin looks back at her, a comical picture of confusion and hiccups. “That was only four,” she manages to say. 

“I know. I decided that four was sufficient,” Holtzmann helps Erin stand up, “also: my measurements were a little off. I ran out of room back here, and I know how you feel about unevenly spaced lines.”

Erin smiles, and Holtzmann is gratified when the humor reaches the redhead’s eyes. 

“We’re almost done,” the engineer wipes a couple of tears away with her thumb, “you took that well.”

“I’m crying,” the physicist protests, even as her cheeks redden at Holtzmann’s approval. 

“Nothing wrong with that,” Holtz clasps Erin’s hand, “especially when you look as pretty as you do doin’ it.”

Erin looks innocent—well, as innocent as she can look given circumstances—as she shyly glances down at their interlaced fingers.

Holtzmann leads her back to the implement table. She sets the cane down before pushing Erin in front of her. 

“Ladies’ choice.”

Erin swallows audibly as she gazes at the weapons of mass destruction (“weapons of _ass_ destruction,” she can just hear Holtzmann saying). She reaches out, tentatively, to inspect the largest paddle on the table. 

“Not that one,” Holtzmann barks. 

“Is it not ready yet?” Erin questions dryly. “Are you going to give me a Swiss army knife instead?” 

Holtzmann is glad that Erin is sounding more like herself, impertinent questions and all. “You mark too easily for that one, Sassafras.”

Erin selects a smaller wooden paddle, and looks to Holtz, who gives her an approving nod. 

“Alright,” Holtzmann takes Erin’s hand, “let’s go.”

“Go?” Erin digs her heels into the ground as Holtzmann pulls her forward. 

“Your room,” Holtzmann turns to Erin when they reach the lab’s door. 

Erin’s room is down the hall. There is little to no chance that Abby or Patty would be in the hallway, but even with those odds, Erin still protests. 

“Holtz, I don’t have any clothes on—”

Holtzmann isn’t concerned; she opens the door and laughs when her girlfriend frantically jumps into her arms, wrapping herself around the engineer like a naked koala. 

Holtz has the decency to bolt to Erin’s room. She flips the light on before depositing the redhead on her own bed. 

Erin bites back a comment about it taking only fifteen seconds to _redress_ , and quietly holds the paddle,  
waiting for further instructions. 

Holtzmann stands in front of Erin’s full-length mirror. She motions for Erin to join her. Erin pads across the carpeted floor. 

Holtzmann spins Erin around and slips her arms around the physicist from behind. 

Erin tries not to get too comfortable, but damn, she is glad that Holtzmann isn’t all business when she is topping. She has been comforted as much as she has been punished during this session, and the knowledge that Holtzmann believes her to be deserving of both—that she _is_ deserving of both, simultaneously—is freeing. 

“Okay, Erin Gilbert, Doctor of Particle Physics,” Holtzmann takes the paddle from her hands, “can you run me through what you are not going to do the next time someone from your past has a ghost problem?”

The engineer keeps one arm around her girlfriend as she swings the paddle down. She doesn’t have to use much force to produce a sharp bite on Erin’s already punished skin.

“I’ll tell you,” Erin yelps, “immediately.”

“And will you attempt to take care of the ghost on your own?”

Holtzmann strikes again. 

“No!”

“What else won’t you do?”

Another swat. 

“Touch your toys without permission?”

And another. 

“Is that a question?”

Erin is hit with a sudden wave of arousal at Holtzmann’s casual toppiness. She has been getting similar twinges all night, but she forced herself to focus on her guilt and the punishment that Holtzmann was meting out. But now—they have to be close to done, don't they?

“No—statement of a fact! I will not touch your toys without permission.”

The paddle cracks down.

Between the pain, her arousal, and her contrition, Erin’s legs are turning to Jell-O under the weight of her body. 

Holtzmann wonders if she can get them to give out all together. She places her left hand below Erin’s belly button, just close enough to her entrance to ignite some electricity, as she brings the paddle down a final time.

Erin is so unprepared for even the suggestion of contact of that nature that her knees buckle instantly.

Luckily, lugging around proton packs and other heavy equipment has left Holtzmann with more than enough muscle to support her lithe girlfriend. 

“Feeling better?” Holtzmann asks slyly. 

Erin nods. 

“I didn’t go easy on you,” Holtzmann turns her girlfriend around so that she can see the reflection of her ass in the mirror, “see?”

Erin studies the redness and lines with curiosity. 

“I’m really proud of you for knowing that you needed this,” Holtzmann gently traces the marks, “and for taking it like such a champ.” 

Erin’s face flushes again. Holtzmann’s words feel like the sun on her skin. She closes her eyes and enjoys the pleasant warmth. 

She squirms against Holtzmann when she realizes that she is also warm between her legs. 

“You okay there, Gilbert?” 

Holtzmann knows that she isn’t, of course. 

Erin looks at her girlfriend imploringly. 

“I think,” Holtzmann smiles wolfishly, “that since you were so independent today, trying to solve your problems on your own, that you should take this one.”

Erin tucks her chin into her shoulder, looking as bashful as Holtzmann has ever seen her. It’s almost more than the blonde can handle. 

The physicist slowly brings her hand to her clit, gently messaging it with her middle and index finger. She continues making small, even circles under the engineer’s watchful eye. 

Holtzmann spanks her lightly with her hand, just hard enough to send tingly shockwaves to the area that Erin is working diligently upon. 

Erin moans softly. Touching herself has never felt like this before. Everything is heightened. Even the hand placed on her waist, which Holtzmann is using to support her weight, is seismic in nature. 

“Good girl,” Holtzmann murmurs into her ear, her hot breath becoming another sensation that Erin must process. 

Holtzmann stops spanking and curls her arm around Erin’s stomach, angling her hand downward. Careful not to interrupt Erin’s progress, she inserts a finger into Erin’s opening. 

Erin arches her back in anticipation.

Being finger-fucked by Holtzmann is like riding a roller coaster. The anticipation during the ascension is killer. She thrusts hard. So hard that Erin feels like she is on the edge of something potentially dangerous as the pressure inside her builds— as if her body can’t possibly survive what is to come. 

She keeps drawing circles on her clit, gasping and panting as Holtzmann adds a second finger. 

The incline is steep, and Holtzmann pushes Erin over its edge forcefully. The redhead reaches one arm back, wrapping it around her girlfriend’s neck, needing something to stabilize her as she lets go. The curling, pleasure-filled contractions fill her stomach, and Erin feels like she is falling into ecstasy. 

Holtzmann watches Erin in the mirror, and wishes that she could photograph the look that crosses her girlfriend’s face as she comes. Her smile is impossibly dainty, and her eyes are wide and rolling backwards, yet serene, as she leans gracefully into the engineer’s shoulder. Holtzmann is pleased that her legacy on this earth includes saving New York City, harnessing nuclear energy, and being the cause of Erin Gilbert’s glorious “O” face. 

After Erin’s nerves have settled, Holtzmann leads her over to her bed. She pulls back the duvet cover and climbs in, leaving a space for Erin to slide into her arms. They intertwine limbs, arms to ankles, and let the exhaustion that the day has wrought wash over them. 

“I feel sorry for most people,” Holtzmann whispers into Erin’s ear, “because there are a lot of them, and only one of you. So chances are they won’t ever get to know you. But having the chance to know you and turning it down? She doesn’t deserve you, Erin. Anyone should be so lucky to have a friend, or girlfriend, or daughter like you.”

Erin sniffles, and Holtzmann holds her tighter, whispering words of assurance until the physicist falls asleep, feeling utterly loved and worthy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing about this arc really went the way that I wanted it to, but I haven't been able to pinpoint why or how to fix it. I hope that it is enjoyable anyway! And that all of you are well. As always, I am open to comments and suggestions. Here, or on Tumblr: http://tenureisfordudes.tumblr.com/


	11. Professors and Pleated Skirts Pt. 1

One of Holtzmann’s favorite things about Erin is how easy it is to please her. Not sexually—Holtzmann takes great pride in the amount of thought and effort that she puts into those endeavors—but the way her girlfriend delights in the little things in life. 

She gave Erin a couple of framed photographs to put on her new desk at NYU, where the professor is now teaching three experimental courses in the Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics. Dear, sweet Erin traced the images of the ghostbusting gang’s faces with her fingertips in wonder, looking like Holtz had just gifted her a puppy. 

The physicist thought that she had planted roots before becoming a Ghostbuster. She pressed her feet into the ground just firmly enough to create a false sense of connection and security wherever she was on her journey. And she was always on a journey—onwards and upwards. 

High school was a rush of perfect grades and extra curricular activities, all carefully orchestrated to lead to college where things would be better. 

College was meant to be ephemeral, so it wasn’t strange that Erin spent those four years planning her ascent to graduate school. 

Graduate school was a transitionary tunnel towards the workforce. 

The workforce was competitive and unstable, but she put plants on her desk and hung non-descript, impersonal photos on the beige walls of the apartments she dwelled in. 

Until Holtzmann handed her those photographs, she hadn’t realized how lovely it was to be reminded of her family while she was away from them. To see their faces and remember the last bit of sage advice Abby gave her, or Patty’s latest irreverent retort, or to note the way that Holtzmann is always a little blurry in pictures because some part of her body is always moving. 

She knows that it is silly, but she is always a little excited when she heads back to her office after lecturing, because she will get to occasionally gaze at the photos while she grades. 

Erin leaves her second lecture of the day in a particularly good mood. Her students were focused and engaged, asking all of the right questions and only occasionally leading her off track by inquiring about her experiences as a Ghostbuster, which she secretly doesn’t mind, but she does have to teach the course material at some point. 

As it turns out, today she doesn’t need to peer at Holtzmann’s blurry visage in the photos in her office, because her girlfriend is slumped in her chair—the heels of her combat boots pressed against the worksheets spread across Erin’s desk.

Erin should probably tell her girlfriend to get her feet off of her students’ homework, but her face involuntarily lights up like a Christmas tree, and she knows that scolding with this love-lit expression on her face is useless. 

“As I live and breathe— Erin Gilbert.” Holtzmann somehow manages to make Erin’s full name six syllables instead of four. “What’s up, doc?” 

Erin steps into her office, closing the door behind her. The parts of her brain capable of critical, analytical thinking are sending off warning signals— cautioning her that this visit is the start of something dangerous. 

Holtzmann has that unmistakable _up to something_ air about her. 

“How was class?” Holtzmann asks casually. 

“Good,” Erin can’t mirror her girlfriend’s offhandedness, “what are you doing here?”

“I came by to fill out the guest lecturer paperwork for next week,” Holtzmann grins, “didja tell them I’m coming?”

“I announced it today.”

“Were they excited?”

“Mildly.”

“C’mon, they lost their shit. I’m a rock star with twenty year old scientists.”

Lose their shit they did, but Erin doesn’t feel the need to stroke her girlfriend’s already enormous ego. 

“They’ll be a good audience.”

“And captive—my favorite kind.”

“They’re good kids,” Erin reaches out to push a few stray curls off of Holtzmann’s face, “probably the best group I’ve had. They want to be here.”

“That’s great,” Holtz pulls a homework assignment out from under her foot, "'Dr. G.'"

“They all call me that. I didn’t realize that Gilbert was so hard to say.”

“Erin,” Holtzmann chuckles, “that means they like you.”

“Really?” Erin brightens, and if that isn’t the most adorable thing Holtzmann has ever seen. 

“Yeah, babe,” the engineer stands up and pulls her girlfriend closer to her. 

“Maybe you aren’t the only rock star with twenty year old scientists,” Erin bumps Holtzmann’s nose with her own. 

“How long have you got before your next class?” 

There it is.

“About twenty minutes,” Erin says cautiously. 

“Great,” Holtzmann easily lifts Erin up onto the desk, “I love a good time constraint.” 

“Holtz—”

“Shhh,” the blonde places a finger to Erin’s lips, “fold your hands in your lap.”

Erin curses her inherent lack of rebellion when she obeys before realizing that she shouldn’t. 

“This,” Holtzmann takes a step back, “is the image that you left me with this morning, and you aren’t going to be able to convince me that you didn’t know exactly what you were doing.”

Okay—Erin bites her lip guiltily—knowing what a knee length, plaid, pleated skirt does to Holtzmann _may_ have contributed to her decision to pull herself up onto the kitchen counter that morning while Holtzmann was burning toast. She sat there demurely, chin tucked into her chest, looking up at the engineer through her eyelashes as Holtzmann ate. She eventually slipped away while her girlfriend stuck her head in the refrigerator to guzzle orange juice out of the carton. 

But that was not an invitation to corner Erin in her office five hours later. 

Holtzmann doesn’t see it that way. She places a hand on Erin’s knee, slowly pushing it upwards towards Erin’s—

“Holtzmann,” Erin hisses, “I am at work!”

“I know,” Holtzmann slips her hands under Erin’s thighs before pulling, forcing the physicist onto her back, “the setting really adds something, don't you think?”

“What if someone hears,” Erin props herself up onto her elbows, “I really don’t want to get fired again.”

“Everything I plan to do is completely silent,” Holtzmann rolls Erin’s skirt up, “controlling the noise level is on you.”

“Let the record reflect that I think this is a terrible idea.”

Holtzmann slowly slides Erin’s underwear off, noting the telltale moisture glistening in them. 

“That’s a bold faced lie,” she says with an infuriating smirk, setting the scrap of black lace on the corner of the desk. 

Erin’s palm itches, and the desire registers plainly on her already sweaty face. 

Holtzmann recognizes the look being leveled at her, so she anticipates the physicist’s next move; she catches Erin’s wrists as she pushes herself up. 

“Oh, buttercup,” the engineer shakes her head, “the sound of your hand against my skin is going to reverberate off of these vaulted ceilings like you wouldn’t believe—right into the hallway.” She opens her palms, releasing her grip, “but be my guest.”

“Fuck,” Erin slumps, the pout on her lips perfectly complementing the pleated skirt bunched around her waist.

“Sorry.”

“No, you’re not.” Erin sits up a little straighter, “but you will be.”

She is satisfied when Holtzmann’s eyes widen ever so slightly at the threat. 

“Let’s go through the agenda for today’s lesson, Miss Gilbert,” Holtzmann leans into Erin, forcing her to lie back onto the desk. 

Erin shudders, and wonders why being stripped of the title she worked so hard for is such a turn on. 

“I’m going to start with my tongue,” the engineer pulls her girlfriend’s legs up, pushing her knees into her chest, “a literal tongue-lashing, if you will.”

If looks could kill, Holtzmann would be slumped over the desk. 

“And then I’m going to put these fingers that I’m so good with to work, because I want to be able to watch your face while I make you come.”

Erin blushes, and no one is surprised. 

“Be honest,” Holtzmann lowers, letting her breath tickle Erin’s entrance, “was this what you wanted this morning when you put on this skirt?”

“Jill,” Erin can’t handle Holtzmann in that position without contact. 

“Tell me.”

“Yes,” Erin concedes, “but that doesn’t mean that you’re off the hook. This is so reckless.”

Holtzmann attacks her clit recklessly in response. Her movements are frantic—somehow sloppy and artful at once—a mix of a flat tongue and grazing teeth. The engineer’s nose is involved in the scuffle too, but Erin can’t place its role—she just knows that her heart beats faster each time that it bumps against her. She writhes on the desk, caroming under the vigor of the mauling. At this rate, she is pretty sure that Holtzmann isn’t going to get the chance to use her fingers. 

The blonde pins her girlfriend’s clit between her teeth, scraping it gently from root to tip. 

Erin lets out a noise that Holtzmann has never heard before, something akin to a shriek, momentarily forgetting that she is smack dab in the middle of a prestigious academic institution.

“Erin Gilbert,” Holtzmann infuriatingly ceases contact, “you are at work!”

The physicist covers her face with her hands in frustration. 

“You are going to see stars tonight, Holtzmann.” Erin tries to push herself upright, but her hand slips on a pile of ungraded worksheets, sending them flitting to the floor. “Do you hear me? Stars.” 

“I don’t know if you've ever looked less threatening.” Holtzmann clamps her hand over Erin’s mouth before the redhead can respond, “make a noise like that again, and I’m going to have to leave.”

Holtzmann isn’t taking any chances, so she doesn’t remove her hand before she dips her middle finger inside Erin. She feels Erin inhale sharply against her palm. 

Inspired by the catechism of Erin’s skirt, Holtzmann uses her thumb to brush a slow vertical line down Erin’s slit—grazing her clit in the center—before drawing an equally slow horizontal line.

Erin is glad that Holtzmann’s hand is covering her mouth when she realizes that her girlfriend is rendering the absolute filthiest sign of the cross. 

The engineer continues her jaunty fuck you to the Catholic Church, steadily tracing with her thumb and drawing her middle finger in and out of her girlfriend. 

Erin is ready to come every time Holtzmann’s thumb anoints her clit, but the blonde’s touch is too gentle and steady to push her over the edge. 

She can’t plead through Holtzmann’s hand. Instead, she sinks her teeth into the engineer’s palm. 

Holtzmann sees the bite for what it is—an act of desperation—and picks up the pace. She shortens the path of her brushes, moving her thumb quicker and harder, and she thrusts with more vigor.

Erin is undone almost instantly. She shoves a mug of pencils off the desk as she squirms, every inch of her opening for Holtzmann: thighs, eyes, mouth, pores. She thinks about the applied physics professor in the office across from her, who is blissfully unaware of the bliss overtaking his new coworker. The Dean, who apologized profusely for giving her an office with no windows—thank God. Her students, who will sit across from her at the desk currently under her, never knowing that it was a platform for _this_ feeling. She quivers as the last coil of Elysium snakes its way through her body.

Holtzmann pulls her up to a sitting position abruptly, planting a sloppy kiss on Erin’s cheek.

“You’ve got class in five minutes.”

The engineer doesn’t wait for Erin’s response. She sweeps out of the office, barely containing her laughter at the frazzled state she is leaving the poor professor in. 

Erin and her office are in complete disarray. She tries to mentally prioritize the actions that she needs to take to get ready for class, but she feels as if she is under water. 

She finally settles on putting her underwear back on as her first step. 

But when she reaches for them on the corner of her desk, they are gone.

“Holtzmann,” she groans in realization, blushing as she imagines what it is going to be like to lecture with nothing between her legs.

Erin grabs her phone and shoots off a quick text message before she begins shakily putting herself back together.

She would be pleased to know that Holtzmann’s breath catches in her throat when she reads the message in the elevator.

_You should probably spend your evening sitting down, because tonight I’m going to make sure that doing so is an impossibility for you for a very long time. Love you!!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really wanted to just let these two crazy kids have some fun. I've put them through a lot.
> 
> I'd like to formally dedicate this chapter to people who use their current geographical location to get away with sending me _very_ baiting messages while I am at work without consequences.


	12. Professors and Pleated Skirts Pt. 2

Erin manages to get through her class, pantiless and punchy, without externalizing her inner agitation.

She is, however, more than a little relieved when the last of her students shuffle (ever so slowly) out of the lecture hall.

The door opens again as she is logging off of the classroom’s computer, and she recognizes Ollie’s permanently pigtailed head.

“Hey, Erin,” Ollie steps in, “I just got done giving an exam—I thought I’d come say ‘hi.’”

“Hi,” Erin smiles and waves her over, “what class?”

“Sociological Theory—I’m possibly the most hated TA on this campus at the moment.” 

"I'm so glad that my classes don't have exams," Erin tugs at her skirt, which somehow feels shorter with the lack of underwear.

Ollie peers at her curiously, “you okay, E?”

The physicist has grown quite fond of Holtzmann’s younger friend, despite their rocky start. Ollie is finishing her PhD in sociology at NYU, and the two frequently meet up for coffee between classes. So she doesn’t mind letting her professional demeanor slip.

“Holtzmann,” she growls by way of an answer. 

Ollie laughs. 

“What’d she do to you?”

“I was just trying to enjoy a nice grading session—“

“Wait—you like grading?”

“Of course—is that weird?” Erin looks as though the thought has never occurred to her. 

“You’re even kinkier than I thought,” Ollie quips.

“Holtz appeared in my office—had her way with me—and then stole my panties.”

“Oh my God,” Ollie guffaws, “her talents were so wasted as a top.”

“She is something else,” Erin says dryly. 

“I bow to her prowess.”

“Hey,” Erin’s eyes narrow, “I need you on my side right now.”

“Sorry,” Ollie shoots her a somber look, “what can I do? I don’t carry spare underwear.”

“I might have to start,” Erin says with a sigh, “but she has the upper hand right now, and I’d like to change that.”

“Keep talking dirty to me, Professor Gilbert.”

“You’re as bad as she is,” Erin laughs. 

“I aspire to be,” Ollie grins, “so you want a bottom’s perspective on how to make your girlfriend’s heart flutter?”

“I don’t want it to flutter,” Erin pulls herself up to her full height, “I want it to sink.”

Ollie’s own heart does a summersault on Holtzmann’s behalf. 

An educational conversation, a train ride, and a stop at Duane Reade later, and Erin is letting herself into the firehouse. 

She finds the gang sharing the couch in their living room, watching a documentary on Alien Abductions. Holtzmann is tucked into Abby’s side, and Erin is pretty sure that the engineer has purposely situated herself in their friend’s protective clutches. 

“Hi,” Holtzmann greets her.

Holtzmann’s eyes trail down from Erin’s face, landing on the item in her girlfriend’s hand.

Well, shit.

“Hi yourself,” Erin smirks when Holtzmann’s eyes widen.

“What’s that?” Abby asks, oblivious to the tension in the air, but curious about Erin’s new acquisition. 

_That_ is a long handled, heavy-looking bath brush— possibly the only implement that Jillian Holtzmann is afraid of. Of course, like most things with Holtzmann, her fear is laced with a heavy dose of curiosity, and more than a little arousal. Her heart skips a couple of beats. 

“This?” Erin taps the brush against her palm, “this is for Holtzmann—she asked me for it.”

Erin has never been more satisfied than she is when Holtzmann’s cheeks redden. The color deepens when Abby and Patty look at the engineer expectantly. 

“It’s uh,” Holtzmann swallows, “for getting ectoplasm off of those hard to reach places.”

“Oh,” Patty nods, “that’ll be good for you, right Erin?”

“I’ll make use of it.”

Holtzmann slumps, and Erin thinks that she could play this game of cat and mouse forever. But she does have an early morning tomorrow, so she turns to make her way up the stairs before glancing back at her girlfriend.

“I’m ready to finish our conversation from earlier whenever you are.”

Holtzmann closes her eyes in an attempt to relieve the burning under the skin on her cheeks. It doesn’t help. She briefly considers staying with Patty and Abby in neutral territory, because the reality of the trouble that she has managed to get herself into is making her tremble—even though it is exactly what she wanted—but that potent mixture of dread and anticipation has her swinging her legs onto the floor. 

She slowly trails behind her girlfriend. 

“It was Ollie, wasn’t?” She hisses when she catches up with Erin in her lab, “she told you about the bath brush—I’m gonna test my new ghost melter on her.”

“She would probably enjoy that,” Erin says airily, sitting down in a chair towards the middle of the room, “you didn’t have a bad experience with it, did you?”

“No,” Holtzmann says quickly, excitement-overtaking apprehension, “I’ve never let anyone near me with one.”

“And yet you followed me up here,” Erin smiles softly.

Holtzmann kneels in front of Erin, knowing that yielding body language does things to Erin’s insides, “I can’t believe you went out and bought one.”

“It is heavy,” Erin tests the weight of the brush in her hand, “and the handle is going to provide a lot of momentum.” 

“I suppose I deserve it,” the engineer rests her chin on Erin’s knee, dimples in full bloom. 

“Stand up and get your pants down,” Erin taps Holtzmann’s chin.

Holtz springs to her feet, unbuttoning her brown corduroy slacks— practically leaping out of them—and Erin wonders if anyone has ever been this excited about getting spanked. 

She stills Holtzmann’s hands when the blonde reaches for her underwear.

“Leave those up for now,” the physicist says sweetly. She pulls Holtzmann over her lap, squeaking a little when the feeling of Holtzmann’s hips against her thighs reminds her of her lack of underwear. 

Erin brings her hand down against the fabric—not particularly hard—but enough to create instantaneous warmth, which is pleasant against her palm. 

Today, she can simply enjoy her girlfriend’s discomfort—Holtzmann isn’t actually being punished—and Erin plans to keep the engineer over her knee for a while. So she strikes repeatedly with the same moderate force, taking the time to carefully warm up her girlfriend’s skin. 

Holtzmann is enjoying the discomfort herself—especially when Erin unexpectedly slaps the skin exposed below her underwear. 

“You know,” Erin slowly loops her finger around the elastic, “if you wanted to go over my knee—you just had to ask.” The physicist takes her time in pulling the cotton boy shorts down, invoking a whimper from Holtzmann. “That stunt in my office wasn’t necessary.”

“Ah,” the blonde wiggles, “but getting here is half the fun.”

Erin slaps harder in response, and Holtzmann swallows a yelp, not ready to give in so easily. 

“Have you started yet?” She asks with enough brass to fill a concert hall, “I can’t tell.”

The physicist unleashes a flurry of slaps on her girlfriend’s thighs, fast and hard, and Holtzmann cannot control the way that her legs lift off the ground. 

“Toes on the floor, darling,” Erin pauses—aggravatingly—until Holtzmann complies. 

Then the redhead is back to spanking gently, almost teasingly. She feels Holtzmann relax into her. 

Hmm, Erin thinks, we can’t have that. 

“I’m so curious about how you are going to respond to the bath brush,” she says cheerfully.

“Uh,” Holtzmann shudders, “curiosity killed the cat.” 

Erin’s palm smacks the same place on Holtzmann’s ass, over and over again. It results in that one spot burning tantalizingly when she stops. She lets the sting meet the lab’s cool air before she moves on and does the same thing to the next spot.

This is a new, unexpected technique, and it has Holtzmann’s lungs filling rapidly as Erin’s hand, and the engineer’s senses, focus on one patch of skin at a time. 

It takes a while, but eventually Erin manages to evenly paint the entirety of Holtzmann’s ass a light, stingy red. 

By this point, the engineer is so spent that she forgets about the bath brush—nothing but her flesh and the flat of Erin’s hand exist in that moment. 

So it is dizzying when Erin pulls her to her feet. 

The physicist grabs her girlfriend’s hands before the blonde can reach back and undo some of her carefully constructed handiwork. This serves to steady the teetering engineer, too. 

Holtzmann pouts. Erin leans in and kisses her agreeably. 

“Over here, darling,” the redhead leads the blonde over to a table, not releasing her hands. “Now, you are going to hop up here and sit quietly while I finish grading the worksheets that I was supposed to finish this afternoon before—well, you know what happened there.”

Holtzmann gapes at her. The poor inventor is a mess—ass blazing, drenched in sweat, arousal manifesting as a conspicuous pique between her thighs—but she can’t find the words to properly protest.

“No touching,” Erin says sternly as she releases Holtzmann’s hands. She helps her girlfriend up onto the table.

Holtz whimpers when her ass makes contact with the cold metal. 

Erin retrieves the bath brush and hands it to her girlfriend, asking politely if she wouldn’t mind holding it. She wonders if Holtzmann’s utterly overwhelmed, deer in the head lights expression is at all like the one she wore earlier when the engineer left her office. 

The redhead grabs her briefcase before settling in at the desk, _her_ unofficial desk, in the corner of Holtzmann’s lab. The view is lovely from there—she can see Holtzmann, legs dangling, clutching the bath brush, the knowledge that her diabolical plan had unraveled around her evident on her flushed face. Erin doesn’t have many assignments to grade, and the answers don't require much deliberation , but she isn’t about to tell her girlfriend that. 

Holtzmann thinks she is going to erupt. She doesn’t know where the inner lava is originating--her ass, her brain, her clit--but sitting on that table watching Erin grade is torture, especially as the weight of the bath brush is evident in her hands. She starts to swing her legs.

“Jillian,” Erin glances up, having seen the movement in her peripheral vision. 

“Yeah?” Holtzmann’s voice is full three octaves higher than it usually is. 

“I want that shirt off,” Erin says matter-of-factly. 

Holtzmann hesitates momentarily before pulling her t-shirt over her head. 

Erin is pleased that she is already braless. 

The engineer draws her knees into her chest, feeling vulnerable. Erin can’t help but smile gently at her—not used to seeing her girlfriend look so small. 

“I’m just about done,” she says, affection getting the better of her. 

“Take your time,” Holtzmann crosses her arms behind her head, not one to let her fragility show for more than a single flash at a time, “I’m perfectly comfortable.”

It’s an absurd statement, but Erin lets it go without comment. She marks the last two worksheets and sets her pen down. She beckons Holtzmann over to her side with a wave.

There is something in her energy— in her just under the surface steeliness— that has Holtzmann both dragging her feet and shuffling quickly. She wonders how much revenge Erin will want to reap before she is satisfied. 

The redhead takes the brush from her girlfriend’s hands before pulling Holtzmann back over her knee. “I know I’d get a better swing if I bent you over the table, but I want to feel every reaction you have to this,” she declares. 

Holtzmann holds her breath in anticipation—the first of many reactions Erin will feel. 

The physicist doesn’t make the engineer wait any longer.

The bath brush crashes against Holtzmann’s ass. She hears the exceptionally loud _crack_ and feels the effect of the stroke simultaneously. The sensation is everything she thought it would be; it stings intensely at first, and then the pain dissolves into something duller and longer lasting. 

“Fuck,” she gasps. 

Erin runs the tips of her fingers over the oval-shaped mark left by the brush. 

“Too much?” She asks. 

“No,” Holtzmann groans, “I mean, I’m dying. But in a joyful manner.”

“Good,” Erin laughs, “because I really want to do that again.”

She smacks her girlfriend twice in rapid succession. 

“Ooooh,” Holtzmann hits an operatic high note, legs kicking. 

“Your vocal range is impressive,” Erin rubs the bristle side of the brush over the blonde’s ass, “do you think you can take more than two like that?”

“Uh-huh,” Holtzmann squirms impatiently. 

“Take a deep breath for me,” Erin instructs, and when Holtzmann complies she brings the brush down five times, hard and fast. All of Holtzmann’s limbs flail. 

“I’m going to feel this tomorrow,” she says between heaves. 

“You left me to lecture without panties,” Erin reminds her without sympathy, swatting her again. 

“Okay,” Holtzmann yips, “I deserve this.”

“Lift your hips,” Erin says, chuckling. 

Holtzmann does as she is told, rolling up onto her toes. 

“Stay just like that,” Erin slips her right hand under Holtzmann, switching the bath brush to her left. Her middle finger easily finds Holtzmann’s clit. She lets it rest there, unmoving, as she slaps her girlfriend’s thigh with the brush.

“Impressive!” Holtzmann squeaks. 

“What?” Erin stills. 

“You're an ambidextrous spanker.”

Erin grins and puts this talent to good use, bringing the brush down with her left hand while pressing Holtzmann’s clit in a circular motion with her right. She finds a rhythm and sticks to it, meting out equal parts pain and pleasure. 

“How,” Holtzmann howls and moans, “have we never done this before?”

Holtzmann is beside herself. The bath brush hurts more than any implement she has ever felt, but Erin is applying it artfully. There is enough force to make her shriek and quiver, but not so much that she actually can’t bear it. That, combined with her girlfriend’s finger’s contact with her clit, would have her swimming, but she has to hold herself up so that Erin can continue spanking and caressing her. 

It is a lot to handle—Erin knows this. So when she senses that Holtzmann is about to dive into euphoria, she stands and smoothly puts one leg up on the chair, flipping Holtzmann over it. Now, she is bearing the brunt of the engineer’s weight as she continues her assault on the woozy engineer’s senses. 

Holtzmann bursts, exploding against Erin’s hand. Her climax is white and hot, with the fibers of her being split between agony and ravishment. She shakes and shudders, bones melting, until she is left panting and limp, draped over Erin’s knee. 

The physicist pulls her upright, and Holtzmann clings to her, not ready to exist on her own just yet. 

Erin sits on the chair and carefully pulls the blonde onto her lap. 

Holtzmann wraps her arms Erin’s neck, curling into her.

“I love you a lot,” the engineer’s voice sounds surprisingly small and raw, and Erin feels a rush of affection toward the tinkerer because, honestly, only Holtzmann would be moved to make a delicate declaration of love after what they had just engaged in. She places a series of gentle kisses on the top of Holtz’s head, forehead, cheek, shoulder, and upper arm. 

“I love you too.”

“But,” Holtzmann lifts her head to look at Erin, “if you think that functioned in anyway as a deterrent—you are so, so, wrong.”

“Holtz,” Erin tries to look stern.

“I have such plans for you and your office, Erin Gilbert. Such plans.”

Erin shifts so that Holtzmann’s ass makes contact with the wood on the chair, eliciting a whine from the blonde. 

“You were saying?”

“That I love you,” Holtzmann folds herself back into Erin, content to let Erin win this round.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised an adorable but slightly impatient human that I would definitely post this chapter tonight, so if there are lots of typos in it, she is totally to blame--not me. 
> 
> Okay, I have another short, light-hearted chapter in the works. I've gotten some requests for some Holtzmann angst (apparently ya'll want me to leave Erin alone), which I have some ideas for, but I'm open to other ideas and prompts as well.


	13. Disturbing the Peace Pt. 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, ya'll. I wrote this chapter because I felt compelled to acknowledge what is happening in this country at the moment. So FYI: there is some election talk in here. If you are looking for pure escapism, skip this chapter.  
> 

Holtzmann is standing outside of the firehouse—arms crossed in front of her, unable to bring herself to open the door.

She takes a deep breath and pushes up the sleeves of the shirt she has been wearing for over twenty-four hours, exposing her cold fingers. She slowly sticks a shaky hand into her pocket, retrieving the key that is nestled between her wallet and her long-dead phone.

The engineer takes a moment to dress herself in layers of lackadaisical bluster and mellow indifference, before jamming the key in its slot.

She stops at the foot of the stairs once inside, closing her eyes as the dizzy nausea that comes with not sleeping overtakes her.

When she feels steady enough to open them, she can see Erin peeking down at her from the top of the stairs.

Holtzmann tries not to look as terrible as she feels, jogging up the steps to join her girlfriend on the first floor.

Abby and Patty are there too.

They are all wearing various shades of anger—and they don’t look much better off than Holtzmann.

She knows that she should apologize immediately—that would be the logical thing to do. But contrition is too close to the emotions that she is struggling to keep below surface level. It is connected to sadness and helplessness, and allowing one to bubble up will result in a chain reaction, ending in tears.

And Holtzmann doesn’t want to waste another tear on that man or this election. So leans against the couch casually, and greets the group with an inane “hi.”

“Hi?” Abby’s eyebrows make a mad dash for her hairline, “that’s what you're going with here, Holtzmann?”

“A perfectly acceptable standard exclamation of greeting,” the blonde says with a shrug, “would you prefer bonjour, or hola?”

“I would prefer that you tell us where the hell you have been,” Abby replies through gritted teeth.

“She,” Patty gestures to Erin, “has been ready to file a missing person’s report since you missed dinner yesterday. Another hour and I was going to let her.”

Holtzmann studies Erin’s messy hair, smudged eye make up, and balled up fists. Guilt coils in her stomach.

“The cops certainly would’ve known where to find me,” she looks away from her girlfriend.

“I don’t think any of us have the patience to talk in circles with you right now,” Patty says wearily.

“I spent the night in the big house,” Holtzmann manages to sound perfectly blasé, “the clincher—a brig.”

“What,” Abby is sputtering, “why?”

Given their fretful expressions, Holtzmann imagines that the gang is probably picturing some kind of nuclear, explosive crime.

“Got arrested at the Trump Tower.”

“You were protesting,” Erin finally speaks, her voice raspy with lack of sleep.

“Indeed, I was.”

“Are you okay?” Erin’s eyes scan Holtzmann’s form for any signs of trauma.

“Peachy keen, jelly-bean,” Holtzmann knows that her offhanded attitude is just making everyone angrier, but button pushing is a welcome distraction from the thoughts in her head. There is a small thrill to be had in seeing just how far she can go.

She does, however, have the sense to avoid looking at Erin—knowing that the glare the physicist is shooting her is probably deadly.

She is right.

The redhead lets out a sound of pure frustration—something between a growl and a hiss—and Holtzmann decides to retreat before she digs herself into a hole large enough to fit all of her tools and equipment.

“Look,” she directs her attention to Abby and Patty, “I’ll be happy to regale you with the tale of my descent into a life of crime a little later, but right now I am about to pass out.”

She turns and makes her way up the stairs, walking straight into the bathroom.

Once she is in the shower, Holtzmann realizes that she does not want to be alone. She is left with the memories of the eighteen hours she spent in a holding cell. The cold concrete and colder air. The beaming florescent lights. Her fellow protesters, some calm, others sobbing.

Her legs give out from under her. She sinks to her knees, letting the water turn lukewarm and then cold.

She doesn’t hear Erin come into the bathroom.

“Hey,” the physicist says as she turns the shower off, “that water is freezing.”

“Still felt good,” the blonde mumbles.

“Get up,” Erin holds a towel open in front of her, “you’re going to get sick.”

Holtzmann obeys, letting her girlfriend wrap the towel around her and guide her into the hallway.

The engineer stops in front of her own door, even though she has taken to sleeping in Erin’s room every night. She doesn’t want to invade the physicist’s space—not when she is so clearly annoyed with her.

“Holtzmann,” Holtzmann can hear the eye roll in Erin’s voice, “I didn’t spend the last eighteen hours frantically searching for you so that we could sleep in separate beds.”

Holtzmann is surprised at just how relieved she is to hear that. Suddenly, she wants nothing more than to be in Erin’s familiar, comforting arms.

Erin tosses her a soft sweatshirt, and pair of cotton shorts to put on once they are in the physicist’s room.

Holtzmann dresses while Erin pulls the blankets on the bed back.

“I just felt like I had to do something,” the engineer says softly, as she crawls under them.

Erin wonders if that is Holtzmann's attempt at an apology.

“That isn’t why I’m mad,” Erin sits next to her, “and I think you know that.”

“I do,” Holtzmann throws herself back dramatically, letting her head crash into the pillows, “and the more you know about what happened, the madder you are going to get.”

“Oh, yay,” Erin remarks dryly.

“I don’t know if I can take having you yell at me,” Holtzmann finally brings her shield of offhandedness down, “right now—at least.”

Erin’s expression softens at that-the toll of the arrest now plainly apparent on the engineer’s drained face.

“If I promise to put a cap on my current level of anger,” Erin slides closer to Holtzmann, linking an arm around her arm, “will you tell me what exactly you did after you vanished without a trace?”

Holtzmann nods and leans into her girlfriend, who places a quick kiss on the top of her head.

“I just went out to get coffee, but I ran into the protesters on Bleecker,” the blonde explains, “and I asked what they were doing, and one of them said that they were marching to the Trump Tower. I thought that was pretty awesome—so I decided to join them.”

“Without telling anyone,” Erin tries not to sound too reproachful.

“I honestly didn’t think to,” Holtzmann sighs, “I’d been feeling so depressed, y’know? I got swept up in this group of people who were banding together and there were so many of them. I felt hopeful. I guess I was chasing that feeling— and not thinking about anyone else.”

“I saw the footage on the news. I didn’t know you were there—but it looked incredible.”

“It was. Until I got arrested.”

“What happened?”

“A cop handcuffed me.”

“Why?”

“To take me to jail.”

“Because?”

“People get arrested at protests all of the time, even when they didn’t actually do anything.”

“So you didn’t do anything?”

“What I did was quite minor.”

“Just tell me,” Erin says, closing her eyes in exasperation.

“This cop told the woman marching next to me—Aliha—that the smartest thing that she could do was take off her hijab. Not the time to _flaunt_ , he said.”

“That’s awful.”

“I know. And he said it like he was just dispensing some friendly advice. As if he was doing her a favor. So I screamed at him.”

“What did you scream?”

“Nothing. I just screamed. In his face. Until I ran out of breath.”

“Of course you did,” Erin can’t help but let out a short, sharp laugh.

“I guess that qualifies as disturbing the peace.”

“You’re lucky he didn’t tear gas you,” Erin pulls Holtzmann in closer to her, glad in this moment that she knows how this story ends: with an uninjured Holtzmann in her arms.

“I ended up in a cell with about ten other people. They took my phone and my shoe laces.”

“And they didn’t let you make a phone call?”

Holtzmann slumps under the blankets with an unintelligible murmur. Erin grabs her arm and pulls her back up.

“Jillian?”

“I didn’t think I needed to,” Holtzmann murmurs, “I didn’t know they were gonna hold me for that long, and I didn’t want to worry you.”

Erin takes a calming breath, remembering her promise to keep her anger in check. “That really didn’t work out,” she says carefully.

“I asked one of the guards, about seven hours in, if I could still take them up on the offer. But they wouldn’t let me,” Holtzmann’s voice is shaky, “and by that point—people were really starting to freak out. There was a woman in my cell whose brother didn’t answer when she called, and she had left her daughter with a babysitter. And this other girl was worried about getting fired, because she was going to miss work. But the cops and the guards didn’t care.”

Erin brushes her fingers through Holtzmann’s hair gently, “you must have felt really helpless.”

“Yeah. We are powerless.”

“Oh, that won’t do,” Erin’s tone shifts from amiable to stringent in an instant, “not at all.”

“What?” Holtzmann feels the garden-variety butterflies start to move about in her stomach.

“I promised I wouldn’t yell at you,” Erin continues to play with her girlfriend’s hair, even as her voice turns to steel, “but I’m not going to let you do that. You don't get to disappear for eighteen hours and come back with a message of despair. Okay, you hit a roadblock. We’re going to hit a lot over the next four years. But think of the way you felt at the protest, Holtz. You were right to chase that feeling. I’ve got some things to say about the way you went about it, but I have every intention of being with you next time.”

Holtzmann tucks her chin to her shoulder as she attempts to make sense of the way Erin’s words have somehow comforted, shamed, inspired, and disquieted her.

She is also, predictably, turned on. Just a _little_ turned on.

“Right now, we’re going to sleep,” Erin continues, reaching out to turn Holtzmann’s face back towards her, “because both of us have a lot of catching up to do on that front. And tomorrow, once you are feeling up to it, I’m going to spank you. Then I think we should talk about what role the Ghostbusters are going to play in this political revolution that is brewing.”

Holtzmann shivers at the way that Erin drops that promise of impending retribution—unyielding and casual as fuck. She buries her head in Erin’s side in response.

“What if I don’t feel up to it?” She asks, voice muffled.

“Talking about the political revolution?” Erin asks teasingly, “I suppose we could put that off.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Past experience tells me that you will.”

Erin can feel Holtzmann pout against her arm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm very lucky to live in New York, where I've had already had the opportunity to take part in two protests. I've felt a little better and a little more optimistic after each one, because it is incredibly morale-boosting to know that you aren't alone.
> 
> *You* aren't alone either.
> 
> [And if you are new to protesting--
> 
> https://right-to-protest.org/protect-your-protest/at-the-protest/be-prepared-in-case-things-go-wrong/
> 
> http://occupypeace.blogspot.com/2011/10/arrested-at-protest-how-to-plan-for-it.html
> 
> Take precautions and plan ahead--because shit can go awry even when you've covered all of your bases.]
> 
> Take care! xxx


	14. Disturbing the Peace Pt. 2

Holtzmann is awake before Erin, rousing from a lucid dream about an epic bust in a Chuck E. Cheese. She’d prefer to keep watching an ectoplasm-covered Erin try to crawl out of a ball pit, but her brain, in an attempt at reorientation, is running through the events of the last two days, which is not conducive to continued sleep.

During this rundown, she realizes that yes—she did take part in a protest.

Yes, she was arrested.

Yes, she did forgo her phone call, leaving her teammates in the dark about her whereabouts for eighteen hours.

And yes, Erin had sent her off to sleep with the casual promise of a spanking.

_“Tomorrow, once you are feeling up to it, I’m going to spank you.”_

Holtzmann cannot replay those words in her head without involuntarily shivering.

But she is a creature with a habit of pressing bruises, leaning into white heat, and aiming herself toward the epicenter of disaster, every damn time.

So she keeps replaying the words over and over, waiting for the flutter to calm. 

It doesn’t.

This phenomenon is pretty bananas, she thinks. She fights ghosts with nuclear-grade weapons for a living. Yet one mention of punishment from her spindly, beanpole of a girlfriend, and she is reeling.

Holtzmann wishes that she could convert her emotions to SI units.

Perhaps then she could solve the technical contradiction of the way that being spanked can be pleasing or punishing, depending on the context.

Okay. For Holtzmann there is always pleasure to be found in the pain. Erin wasn’t lying when she described her as impossible to punish. But there are times, like this very moment, when she is genuinely nervous about going over her girlfriend’s knee.

It isn’t the pain. No, Erin actually tends to strike harder when they are playing. They draw new lines of endurance in the sand when they aren’t also balancing emotional turmoil.

So the trepidation must be an internal force—transmitted directly from her brain to her stomach.

She could exterminate these butterflies at any point, if she really wanted to. Now, before the session starts, or during, with a verbal mention of her least favorite crunchy vegetable.

So why do it?

Perhaps it is the guilt. For someone who only expresses culpability in flashes, Holtzmann feels it with the intensity of someone devoted to Catholicism. Without the cute uniform. Erin is the one with the uniform. God, Erin looks hot in that uniform. What would Erin do if _she_ put on the uniform?

Holtzmann knows that she should really focus.

There is also the knowledge that Erin is pretty darn mad at her. And as hot as Erin looks when she is angry—eyes blazing, hair unruly, tall posture—

Still focusing.

The engineer considers the shame of knowing that she, a grown ass woman, benefits from having her girlfriend repeatedly slap her ass. Sure, it didn’t keep her out of trouble this time—but there have been moments when she has thought twice about doing something reckless, because she flashed to an image of Erin wielding a paddle or a riding crop.

And in a few of those moments, she actually listened to the little voice inside her head. She didn't charge headfirst into a potentially dangerous situation.

_“Tomorrow, once you are feeling up to it, I’m going to spank you.”_

Nope. All of this theorizing and her stomach still feels the same way it did when Erin first delivered the sentence.

Only now, her stomach is growling too.

She looks at Erin’s clock and realizes that she and her girlfriend have slept through a few meals.

Holtzmann is never one to rise before eight o’clock in the morning, but her gnawing stomach and whirling brain won’t allow her to go back to sleep.

She swings her legs over the side of the bed, pausing when she feels Erin’s hand grab the fabric of her sweatshirt.

“Where?” The redhead asks, unable to use her words at this time of the morning.

“Just to the kitchen.” The engineer feels a pang of guilt as she realizes that Erin is probably nervous to let her out of her sight—even while sleeping—after her disappearing act.

“I’ll be back,” she promises, kissing her girlfriend’s hand.

Holtzmann plods through the hallway and down the stairs.

“Holtzy, we’ve been over this,” Patty calls from behind her door as the blonde walks past her room, “quieter steps.”

Holtzmann stops in front of her friend’s door.

“Sorry, Patty,” she says, leaning against it, hoping that her favorite history-nerd deciphers the subtext in that statement.

_Sorry for worrying you yesterday._

_Sorry about the devil-may-care assholery._

The door opens, and a groggy Patty stands before Holtzmann. 

“This is the second time in the last two days you’ve kept me from sleeping, baby.”

It’s a gentle admonishment, and an acknowledgment that Patty knows that Holtzmann is apologizing for more than her overly enthusiastic steps.

“Won’t happen again,” Holtzmann smiles softly, hoping to get one in return.

She does.

“Love you,” Patty says before moving to close the door, “even though you walk like a Roman General.”

“Love you too, Pats.”

Holtzmann makes her way into the kitchen, where Abby is siting at the breakfast island, sipping a mug of coffee.

“You’re up early, tiny jailbird,” she says, without looking up from the paper she is reading.

“I’m gonna make Erin some breakfast, do you want something?”

“Ah,” Abby says, “trying to win back favor through food?”

“Everyone likes food.”

“Not when you make it, Holtz,” Abby reminds her kindly.

Oh. Right.

“Guess I’ll have to think of another way to wiggle my way back into your heart, Abigail Yates.”

“Not necessary,” Abby grabs the blonde’s hand, giving it a squeeze, “but if you promise to call the next time you join a protest, I’ll forgo all of the prison jokes I’ve been thinking of this morning.”

“Deal,” Holtzmann squeezes Abby’s hand back.

“How about if you make some toast, and I’ll soft boil a couple of eggs for you two—those always seem more impressive than they actually are.”

Holtzmann gets the toast right on her third try.

She scarfs down her eggs and toast before bringing a plate of the modest breakfast up to Erin’s room.

Her girlfriend is sitting up in bed—a notebook resting on her knees and a pencil in her hands.

“I thought you’d probably be hungry,” Holtz says, sounding more timid than she is okay with.

“Did you eat?” Erin asks, putting the notebook aside and taking the plate from Holtzmann.

“Yep,” the engineer sits on the edge of the bed, “I’m all good in the hood on the food front.”

Erin eats in silence.

Holtzmann would really like to know what is going to happen.

Erin knows this—but she waits until she has finished everything on the plate to put Holtzmann out of her misery.

Well.

“Wondering what you are in for, darling?”

She is really pushing her into a new kind of misery.

Holtzmann swallows. “Yeah.”

Erin sets her plate on the nightstand next to the bed. In one swift motion, she grabs Holtzmann’s wrist and pulls the blonde across her lap.

“Oh,” Holtzmann squeaks, “little less conversation, a little more action. Okay.”

“I just want to get the warm up out of the way,” Erin says pragmatically, “then we’ll talk.”

In solid mechanics, the twisting of an object due to applied torque is called a “twisting moment,” and Holtzmann is pretty sure that one is happening inside her stomach right then as Erin slides her down her shorts.

The sharp sting when Erin’s hand meets her ass is almost a welcome distraction.

The physicist warms her up quickly, with fast and light swats, but Holtzmann doesn’t find much comfort in how bearable this phase of her punishment is. It’s almost ominous in its benignness, as she knows that Erin is holding back for a reason.

Just as quickly as she was pulled over Erin’s knee, Holtzmann finds herself plopped onto the floor, legs tucked under her.

She looks up at Erin.

“I don’t know if I can properly put into words how hard it was to not know where you were,” Erin says seriously, “I want you to imagine me going out for coffee and not coming back for eighteen hours. Overnight. Where would your mind go?”

“Nowhere good,” Holtzmann answers solemnly.

“I started to wonder if you were dead,” Erin says, “it seems melodramatic now, but at the time it seemed like the only explanation as to why you wouldn’t call. I pictured myself having to bust your damn ghost.”

Holtzmann takes a shaky breath, but she doesn’t speak.

“Is there anything you’d like to say?”

The engineer shakes her head, getting the sense that she is somehow disappointing Erin further.

“You won't do this again,” Erin says grimly, “if nothing else, I’m going to make sure that calling me is the first thing that you think of the next time you are in trouble.”

Holtzmann leans her forehead into Erin’s knee, already murmuring apologies.

“Hey,” Erin strokes her hair—remembering how important Holtzmann’s comfort was to her when she was being punished,  
“it’s going to be okay, Holtz.”

Holtzmann manages a weak smile, because she knows that. The road to okay just happens to be a tumultuous one.

“Now,” Erin grabs the notebook and pencil, “write down my phone number.”

“Why?” Holtzmann stares at her girlfriend, not moving.

It becomes apparent that Erin is _not_ fucking around when she hauls the blonde back over her knee, bringing her hand down another five times.

“Okay,” Holtzmann kicks her legs, “give me the paper!”

Erin does, and the engineer quickly does as she was told.

_641-9154_

“Oh,” Erin’s tone is just dangerous enough to make the blonde’s spine tingle, “so you do know it, then.”

Holtzmann, for once in her life, keeps her mouth shut.

“Add the seven numbers together, please.”

Holtzmann learns that it is difficult to do basic mental math under such distressing circumstances.

“Thirty?” She is genuinely unsure.

“Correct,” Erin says, “what the thirty divided by ten?”

Holtzmann doesn’t know where this is going, but she has the distinct impression that she is digging her own mathematical grave.

“Three.”

“Listen carefully—you’ve got five minutes to search the firehouse for something new for me to spank you with. Once you are finished, I want you to come back in here, take your shorts off, and stand facing the wall. I’m going to give you ten strokes with whatever you bring back with you. We are going to do this three times—three different implements. Ten strokes each.”

 _…What?_ Holtzmann’s ears are burning as she tries to make sense of the directions that Erin just gave her.

“Nothing from our collection?”

“No—be innovative.”

“But—”

“You aren’t going to convince me that _you_ of all people, can't think of three things lying around that can be repurposed.”

Erin pulls Holtzmann to her feet, yanking up her shorts and pushing her towards the door.

Skin still tingling from the warm up, the engineer heads straight to the kitchen, knowing that there are plenty of potential weapons in its drawers and cabinets.

Three minutes later, Holtzmann is standing in Erin’s doorway, holding a slotted plastic spatula.

Interesting, Erin thinks. She beckons for her girlfriend to enter.

Holtzmann sets the spatula on the bed before taking her shorts back down, putting her hands on top of her head, and facing the wall.

Erin lets her stand like that for a moment, watching as the blonde tries not to fidget.

“You can come over here, now,” the physicist finally says.

Holtzmann turns around, taking a tentative step towards her girlfriend.

“Ready?” Erin asks.

“Uh,” Holtzmann bounces back and fourth on the balls of her feet, “yeah.”

The redhead takes three pillows from the head of her bed, piling them up in the center.

“Over these, then.”

Holtzmann hops up onto the bed, resting her hips on top of the pillows.

“Do I need to count?”

“Oh, no,” Erin says, “there is no way you'd be able to do that coherently.”

_Oh, shi—_

The spatula cracks down ten times in rapid succession—though Holtzmann wouldn’t know the number if you asked her. The implement is bendy but firm, and the holes in it allow for serious airflow. 

The swats feel blistering.

Holtzmann grips the fabric of the duvet under her, toes curling as she wills herself to stay in position.

“That takes care of you not bothering to send me a quick text before you started protesting,” Erin’s voice is stern, “and I want to reiterate that I have no problem with you protesting. Had you let me know, I probably would have joined you. Patty and Abby might have come along too.”

“Got it,” Holtz turns around to give her girlfriend a halfhearted two-finger salute.

“Let’s talk about the other opportunity that you had to tell me where you were.”

Holtzmann slumps back into position.

“Tell me again why you didn’t use your phone call.”

“Didn’t want to bother you,” the blonde says softly.

“Eight months ago I would have believed that,” Erin sounds disappointed again, and Holtzmann hates it, “but you’ve gotten so much better about telling me when you need something. What happened?”

“Nothing—I regressed a little. I’m sorry.”

“I know you didn’t realize that they were going to hold you as long as they did, but even so—you had to know that you missing was going to bother me more than having to come and pick you up.”

“Wasn’t thinking,” Holtzmann mutters.

Erin sighs. There is a piece missing in the Jillian Holtzmann puzzle that she has spent the better part of a year solving. She doesn’t get new segments often, so progress is slow. But she is patient. She just wishes that the engineer didn’t always need to be pushed to the edge of her pain precipice before giving up a shred of Holtzmann-lore.

“Get up,” she orders briskly, “go find your next implement.”

Holtzmann redresses quickly before jogging out of the room. She is grateful, in that moment, to have a break from Erin’s difficult line of questioning.

She returns a few minutes later with the plastic rod from the blinds in her lab, which she hands to Erin before taking her place facing the wall.

She isn’t going easy on herself, Erin notes as she studies the rod. She is glad to have that glimpse into Holtzmann’s current emotional state, since the engineer isn’t giving her much to go on. The physicist learned early on that Holtzmann won’t make herself vulnerable—but she will bow when Erin applies the right kind of pressure.

So she orders Holtzmann back over the pillows as she gives the rod a few test swipes.

Listening to the sound of the implement cutting through the air, the engineer knows that she is on the verge of a bending moment: the reaction induced in a structural element when external force is applied.

Her clumsy attempt at a mental metaphor is interrupted when the external force that is Erin Gilbert snaps the plastic rod down across the top of her ass. 

It paints a line of searing heat where it makes contact.

Holtzmann gasps. The sting is biting and barely bearable.

Erin waits until her girlfriend’s muscles visibly slacken before she brings it down again—repeatedly.

“Whatever your reasons, Jillian,” she says as she strikes the seventh and eighth times, “I want you to remember this before you even think about leaving me to worry about you like that again.”

Holtzmann loses control and reaches back—half expecting to find her skin covered in welts.

It isn’t. Her ass is hot to the touch, but as smooth as it has always been.

Erin is getting to be way too good at this.

“Two more,” the redhead says, “get your hands out of the way.”

She isn’t being cruel. Erin just senses how close she is to getting Holtzmann where she needs to be—and the engineer isn’t going to respond to gentle prodding.

Holtzmann buries her face in the duvet, balling up the fabric in her fists in anticipation.

The last two strokes land, and Holtzmann bends, the curvature manifesting in the way she reaches for Erin, ready to reveal another piece of herself in the physicist’s arms.

Erin slides next to her girlfriend, relieved when Holtzmann’s limbs melt into hers.

“Tell me what you were thinking when you chose not to call,” she whispers into Holtzmann’s tangled hair.

The physicist waits patiently while her girlfriend catches her breath.

“I freeze up when I feel like I’m answering to someone,” the engineer closes her eyes, finding it easier to confide in darkness, “that’s shitty, and completely unfair to you, but the idea of calling you and telling you where I was felt like an obligation. And I guess I tried to prove to myself that I wasn’t bound to it.”

Oh. This actually makes sense, Erin thinks.

Holtzmann never lets the gang know when she is going to be late to a meeting or a bust. She’ll waltz into the firehouse with explanations of street side distractions or delayed trains, but not once has she ever called ahead to notify them.

She is at the point where she will let Erin tend to her injuries with little complaint—but she never actually tells her girlfriend about them. Erin always finds out through observation—seeing Holtzmann favor her left hand, or limp on her right foot.

The engineer does disappear occasionally—though not for eighteen hours at a time. She slips away undetected, and then rolls her eyes when Abby or Patty express concern about where she went. 

Erin has often wondered if Holtzmann does these things simply because she can, but until now she has never felt the need to broach the topic. Her behavior seemed quirky, but innocuous in the long run.

“So you were feeling rebellious,” the physicist says, her tone free of judgment.

“I’m a rebel without a cause.”

“Is it because of this?” Erin runs her fingers over the lines she painted across Holtzmann’s ass, “if this makes you feel like you have to exert your independence—”

“No,” Holtzmann says firmly, “it doesn’t actually have anything to do with you. This election kinda brought out some of my more anarchistic tendencies.”

“Is there something in that mysterious backstory of yours that will help me understand why? Something with your parents?”

“My parents were awesome.”

Erin notes the tense of that sentence, but she says nothing, hoping that Holtzmann will elaborate.

“My last set of foster parents were these bible thumping wingnuts—who I’m sure campaigned for Donald Trump like their salvation depended on it. I was thirteen when they found out that had I kissed a girl. After that, they made me call and check in every fifteen minutes when I was out of the house. Made it hard to have friends, and that was already a challenge for a homeschooled foster kid. It started out as a punishment, but they ended up making me keep it up until I ran away when I was fifteen.”

Holtzmann says this matter-of-factly. Like it isn’t a rare glimpse into the making of Jillian Holtzmann. As if Erin already knows that she had multiple foster parents. And that she once ran away.

Erin follows her casual lead, keeping the surprise out of her voice. “I’m sorry, Holtz.”

“Sometimes I feel like I’m still celebrating not being under their control, and Trump getting elected made me feel powerless in the same way that I did when I was thirteen.”

Erin kisses Holtzmann’s temple.

“I hate that I scared you,” Holtzmann plays with the fabric of Erin’s shirt, “and I’m sorry that I’m such a dick.”

Erin laughs, feeling high on the progress that she and the engineer are making.

“You aren’t a dick.”

“I exhibited some seriously dickish behavior.”

“Okay,” Erin threads her fingers through Holtzmann’s hair, “I’ll give you that—but we all do sometimes. You just imbue your dickishness with a lot of flourish.”

“Everything I do has a lot of flourish.”

“Even choosing your third implement?”

Holtzmann bites her bottom lip to keep it from protruding as Erin pulls her to her feet, tugging her shorts up.

There is something comforting in Erin’s determination. The president elect is a bigot, and the engineer just revealed a private, painful part of her childhood, but Erin is still going to spank the daylights out of her.

“This is like a scavenger hunt from a horror film.”

Holtzmann anticipates the swat the Erin sends her way, stepping just out of reach before it lands.

The engineer’s cheeks redden as she wanders back down to the kitchen, wondering how visible the evidence of her punishment is beneath the thin cotton of her shorts.

Her face turns scarlet when Abby enters the kitchen.

The engineer presses herself against the wall in an attempt to obscure any apparent indication of what she and Erin have been up to.

“Hi, Abigail,” she squeaks as her ass makes contact with the hard surface.

“You aren’t possessed, are you?” Abby suspiciously steps closer.

“Nope!”

Holtzmann makes a grab for the first viable implement she sees—a wooden spoon—before scrambling out of the kitchen, not bothering to attempt an explanation.

Luckily, this behavior is just bizarre enough to convince Abby that the soul inside Holtzmann’s body is definitely Holtzmann.

Erin takes one look at Holtzmann and deduces what happened.

“Run into someone downstairs?”

“Abby,” Holtz removes her shorts before handing the spoon to Erin, “lucky for you, I was very smooth.”

“Lucky for me?” Erin raises an eyebrow.

“Think about how she would react if she found out that you _beat_ me.”

“Too bad she didn’t realize that the color of your face is a cry for help.”

The engineer touches her own cheek, feeling the warmth from the flush, which isn’t dissipating. Holtzmann rarely blushed before she met Erin.

“Back over the pillows?” She asks, turning towards the physicist’s bed.

“Where do you want to do this?”

Erin knows the answer.

Holtzmann knows that Erin knows the answer.

Erin is charmed as Holtzmann clasps her hand in front of her, gazing at the floor.

“Tell me,” Erin says gently.

“Over your knee.”

Erin takes her girlfriend’s hand, pulling her over to the bed.

Holtzmann settles into position, marveling that the familiarity is actually comforting. She feels lighter.

And sassier.

“I think you’ve conquered ever inch of my ass,” she says with a wiggle, “what’s left to spank?”

“Oh, Holtzmann,” Erin says, “you’ve just issued a challenge no top could ever turn down.”

 _Uhm._ The engineer trembles.

“Spread your legs, darling.”

 _Oh_. That’ll teach me to open my mouth, Holtzmann thinks as she slowly opens her legs.

The spoon is actually the perfect implement to assault a hard to reach area—like Holtzmann’s white, previously untouched inner thighs.

So Erin angles it and does just that.

Holtzmann bucks immediately, snapping her legs shut.

“Come on now,” Erin gently caresses the back of Holtzmann’s legs, encouraging her to return to position, “you can do better than that.”

“Your faith in me is misplaced,” Holtzmann quips, but she readies herself for another stroke.

Erin snaps the spoon down again, on the opposite thigh this time.

Holtzmann impressively manages to stay still.

She kicks and wiggles as Erin whacks the spoon onto her thighs over and over, alternating sides.

She wonders if she is going to walk bow-legged when Erin finally lets her up.

After she has thoroughly tinted Holtzmann’s thighs pink, Erin sets the spoon aide. She pushes the engineer onto her knees in front of her again.

Holtzmann looks up at her, waiting for further instruction.

“I just want you to know that I think you are incredible,” Erin strokes the side of her girlfriend’s face with her thumb.

Holtzmann scoffs and tries to find something interesting to stare at on Erin’s wall.

“Look at me,” the physicist waits until her girlfriend finally gives in, “you are. Every time I learn something new about you, I’m more impressed that you are who you are. And I’m so glad that you are on my side in this fight—if anyone is going to be able to ignite change, it’s you.”

Erin can’t help but find it amusing that Holtzmann is blushing harder now than she ever did during her punishment.

Holtzmann cannot deal with the burning in her face and warmth in her chest longer than a few seconds.

“I’ve got ideas about that,” she stands up, “and I’ll share them with you, but first—”

Usually, Erin would take care of Holtzmann’s needs at this point, but the engineer feels like changing things up a bit—in the spirit of revolution.

Erin puts up a pretty pathetic fight as her girlfriend yanks her pants and underwear down.

Holtzmann dips a finger inside the physicist, grinning as she notes just how wet she is.

“Well, well, well,” she smiles wickedly, “what’ve you got to say for yourself?”

“It isn’t my fault that you look the way that you do when you’re being punished,” Erin says with a moan as Holtzmann starts a trail of kisses at the bottom of her breastbone.

She reaches up to tangle her fingers into Holtzmann’s hair, but Holtzmann ceases all contact when she touches her.

“Put your hands above your head,” the engineer orders.

Erin does, willing to do just about anything to have Holtzmann touching her again.

“Every time you move them,” Holtzmann continues her trail, “I’m going to stop.”

“It’s a good thing I have a lot of willpower,” Erin murmurs, arching her back as Holtzmann kisses her stomach.

“You’re just really fucking stubborn,” Holtz says with a smug grin.

But she knows that Erin is right. Now that she has vowed not to move—she won’t. So Holtzmann lowers herself to the physicist’s entrance, letting her warm breath tease the opening.

She watches Erin clasp and unclasp her hands above her head, and listens to her girlfriend’s audible, quickening heartbeat.

She has a feeling that Erin is going to experience her own bending and twisting moment immediately on contact.

So she takes Erin’s clit into her mouth easily, applying voltage with her tongue while sucking gently, and Erin detonates instantaneously. Holtzmann shivers with pleasure as she feels and tastes the way that Erin bursts against her now flattened tongue.

It’s a pretty joyful experience on Erin’s end too—she is all shooting sparks and curling muscles, and she _is_ really fucking stubborn, as Holtzmann said, because her hands remain above her head the entire time that she convulses under Holtzmann’s electromotive force.

They are both panting when the engineer pulls away.

After a moment, Erin pops up and flips a very confused Holtzmann onto her stomach. She lands five rather halfhearted swats to the center of Holtzmann’s ass.

Holtzmann finds herself trying to squirm away out of instinct.

“What the hell was that for?” she asks, not resisting as Erin wraps her arms around her.

“212. You forgot the area code, when you wrote my phone number down. Very important. Two, plus two, plus one is five.”

“Now look who’s being a dick with flourish,” Holtzmann pouts, but she can’t keep the scowl on her face for long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somehow this is 18 pages? And super angsty. Whoops.
> 
> I know I say this every time, but please forgive the typos. My tragic flaw is that I’m an English professor who cannot, for the life of her, proofread her own work. But I also refuse to let anyone do it for me. 
> 
> I’d like to give a shout out to the people who keep bugging me about updating this. I really, really appreciate the motivation and encouragement. 
> 
> Special thanks also to the (coincidentally, really fucking stubborn) person who originally inspired the numerical consequences that I played around with in this chapter. 
> 
> Tenureisfordudes.tumblr.com, if you have comments or suggestions.


	15. Asking for It Pt. 1

Erin Gilbert has just thoroughly butchered a set of complex equations. Holtzmann needs them to continue work on the suped-up Geiger counter that she is building. Erin isn’t sure what purpose the new toy will eventually serve—she just knows that her girlfriend needs her to figure out a way to test the Stefan Boltzmann law against the radiation levels they have recorded in their ghostly encounters. 

The physicist slides her notebook onto the table in front of Holtzmann, waiting with her hands clasped in front of her as her girlfriend studies her less than stellar work.

The engineer pulls a pen from her coiled hair, and Erin wonders what else she has stashed in her bleached tresses today. 

“Gilbert,” she says as she strikes and rewrites with the pen, “this is perfect until the end. Do you really think that thirty divided by three is four?”

“I guess I wasn’t terribly focused,” Erin tries to sound guilty.

“Get some coffee, babe.”

Holtzmann ruffles Erin’s hair with the force of a small tornado before clomping up to her lab.

The physicist sighs. 

She is stressed--the kind of strain of no discernible origin that twists her veins and has her knees bouncing with tension each time that she sits down.

Erin was once offended when Abby, in a truly risky friendship-move, called her a “total Slytherian.” The debate that followed was heated. Traits were analyzed, all seven books were consulted, and Patty and Holtzmann did their best to moderate. Holtzmann tried to interject that _maybe_ Erin was Ravenclaw, but Abby shut that nonsense down fast.

“You’re just telling your girlfriend what she wants to hear,” she had said, smacking the engineer’s arm hard enough to elicit an “ow!”

Erin came around to Abby’s perspective eventually, conceding that her ambition and the calculating way that she sets about achieving her goals did seem to place her in the house of silver and green—despite the courage, cleverness, and loyalty that her friends assured her she possessed. 

Erin’s mind is ultimately a linear equation—a straight line between what she has and what she wants.

And she is never short on brilliant ideas as to how to solve the problem in front of her—it’s just the execution that occasionally trips her up. 

You see, she has observed the way that Holtzmann’s tensity dissipates when Erin vigilantly dispenses the right kind of slightly bitter medicine. 

She believes that she could really benefit from the same treatment plan right now. 

But Holtzmann is just so goddamn good at _asking_ for it. 

Never once has the engineer had to come out and explicitly say, “Hey, would you spank me?”

And sure, part of that is because she spends a significant amount of time tumbling headfirst into calamity, but even when she isn’t in trouble—even when she just wants to play, she knows exactly how to invoke the top in Erin.

How to make her girlfriend’s chest burn with the desire to grab her wrist and take control. 

How to make the physicist’s palm itch.

How to make Erin want to knock her down a few pegs, even though she actually believes that Holtzmann’s ego is the perfect size for the engineer’s shape.

Erin’s type A personality mandates that she excel at everything that she tries—and she wants to make Holtzmann feel those sensations and feelings. 

She knows that it is possible, after all. Holtzmann was a top before she met Erin.  


So she smooths her hair back into place, vowing to try a little harder to screw up during phase two.

The physicist waits until 4:45 P.M. to execute the second part of her plan. 

Holtzmann isn’t one for routine, but she does stop working at 5:00 P.M. every day, setting aside whatever piece of machinery she is tinkering with to shove an entire can of Pringles into her mouth. 

But today at 5:00, Erin is sitting on Holtzmann’s desk, salty parabolas in her well-manicured hands, legs crossed daintily. 

She starts to eat.

Holtzmann glances up at the crunch, but she seems relatively unfazed by the start of phase two. 

Maybe she thinks I’m going to stop, Erin thinks. 

She continues to reach into the can—remembering about ten chips in that Pringles tend to turn to paste on your tongue.

She wonders how Holtzmann, who is still working intently, ever gets through the whole can. 

Well. Commitment to a cause is an admirable quality, and Erin is committed with a capital C, so she grabs a stack of five chips, pushing them against her teeth. 

She chews. 

She swallows. 

She realizes that she was overly ambitious in her quantity choice when she starts to cough.

Holtzmann drops her wrench, for all the wrong reasons, and grabs a bottle of water. 

Erin wants to groan in frustration, but she is too busy sputtering as Holtzmann gently taps on her back. 

“See,” the engineer ruffles Erin’s hair again when she finally stills, “I told you they are addicting.”

“Right,” Erin says, eyes rolled toward the ceiling.

Erin decides, as she fixes her hair in the bathroom, to skip phase three: pulling a few key bobby pins out of Holtzmann’s carefully styled hair—and phase four: repeatedly turning off the engineer’s music--in favor of going straight to phase five.

She winks at herself in the mirror.

And then vows never to do that again, because it was more disturbing than encouraging. 

She marches into Holtzmann’s lab.

The engineer is working on something small and delicate, her tongue sliding in and out of the corner of her mouth as she concentrates.

Erin momentarily forgets her purpose as she watches her girlfriend work.

“Hey, buttercup,” Holtzmann pushes her goggles onto her forehead, “here to help me?”

“No,” Erin folds her arms, in a manner that she hopes looks infuriatingly defiant. 

“Oookay,” Holtzmann studies her for a moment, “am I in trouble?” 

_Shit,_ Erin thinks, marveling at just how much she is messing up her attempts to mess up.

Wait. 

Why would Holtzmann be in trouble?

“Should you be?” She can’t stop the toppish tone from clouding her voice. 

“Nope,” the blonde doesn’t sound especially convincing, “I’ve been on my best behavior.”

“That isn’t saying much,” Erin says wryly, feeling so much more comfortable in this familiar state.

“You can have my hair dryer.”

“I have my own hair dryer.”

“About that,” Holtzmann smiles, tight lipped and dimpled. 

“You ruined my hair dryer.”

“I did not ruin it—it just might not be functioning in the way that you want it to at the moment.”

Erin sighs.

“If you want,” Holtzmann ruffles Erin’s hair _again,_ “later you can take your frustrations out on my cute ass—I’m selfless like that.”

 _God_. Usually such a quip would make Erin want to do exactly that—but today it just makes her feel farther away from her goal of ending up over Holtzmann’s knee. 

She needs to regroup.

Clearly this plan isn’t working.

She stalks out of the lab—not bothering to fix her hair—forgetting all about phase five and her initial plan to tauntingly pick up a piece of equipment that she definitely wasn’t supposed to touch. 

She ends up on the couch in the living room. 

She curls onto her side before falling into a fretful sleep, filled with dreams of Holtzmann _almost_ spanking her.

She wakes up even more frustrated. Not only is she still stressed, but the realism of being turned over Holtzmann’s knee in her dreams now has her very, very turned on. 

She stands up, clothing rumpled, hair sticking up in all directions, eye-make up everywhere but her eyes.

Her new plan is to calmly explain her needs and desires to her girlfriend, like the college-educated woman she is. 

So she stomps upstairs, stopping in front of her bedroom door when she realizes that Holtzmann has called it an early night.

Erin knows that she looks a little batty, post-nap, but she will make up for that in eloquence. 

She knocks on the door. Forgetting—in her preoccupied state—that doing so isn’t necessary to gain access to her own space. 

Holtzmann opens the door, and for a moment she looks genuinely concerned at Erin’s frenzied condition.

“Jillian,” Erin takes a slow, calming, cleansing breath, “I really need you to _fucking_ spank me.”

That wasn’t . . . 

She really. . . 

Now Holtzmann is . . . 

Nothing today is going Erin’s way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yell at me here:
> 
> tenureisfordudes.tumblr.com
> 
> I'm going to respond to the reviews from the last chapter tomorrow--thank you so much for taking the time to comment. I'm behind on everything related to living at the moment.


	16. Asking for It Pt. 2

The way that the corners of Holtzmann’s mouth turn up is infuriating. She leans on the doorframe—a picture of cool indifference—as Erin stands before her, looking like a hodgepodge of nuclear wreckage. 

“I’m sorry. What did you say?”

The engineer is still dressed, and Erin can see an armful of mechanical pieces spread out across her bed—evidence that her girlfriend was probably breaking their no-soldering-in-bed-rule. 

But she doesn’t care. 

“Holtz,” the redhead lets the full extent of her desire creep into her voice, “please.”

Holtzmann steps aside and gestures dramatically for Erin to enter the room. Erin slips inside, sitting on her bed as the blonde shuts the door.

“No,” the engineer points to a spot in the middle of the room, “I want you front and center.”

 _Oh, boy._ Erin has been angling for a show of dominance like that all day, but craving it doesn’t prompt her heart to stay out of her throat. She moves to the place that Holtzmann indicated, waiting for further instruction. 

Holtzmann takes her place on the bed, tucking her legs under her while watching Erin intently. 

Erin tries in vain to find a position to stand in that doesn’t have her feeling like she is on display. She finally settles with her feet shoulder with apart and her hands hanging down at her sides. 

Holtzmann cocks her head to one side, grinning. 

“What?” Erin asks impatiently, trying, and failing, to keep the pout off her face. 

“Nothing,” the blonde shakes her head, “I’m just deciding what I’m going to do with you.”

As she fidgets under the engineer’s gaze, Erin marvels at how easily Holtzmann slips domination on like a tailored coat. 

“Well,” the physicist says, “you could—”

“Oh,” Holtzmann laughs, “the suggestion box is closed, buttercup.”

Erin closes her mouth with the snap, vowing to try to slip into submission with the same level of commitment that Holtzmann is giving their role reversal. 

“Grab that,” the engineer gestures to the wooden chair that sits in front of Erin’s small reading desk, “and place it where you're standing.”

Erin’s leaden feet slow her gait as she pads across the room. She is suddenly aware of the vulnerability of her bare feet, the feeling against the wood of the floor reminding her of the other parts of her anatomy that will soon be uncovered. 

Holtzmann stands up once the chair is in place. She sits down and grasps Erin’s wrist, gently pulling her in front of her. She reaches up and slowly undoes the button on Erin’s pants.

The redhead can feel her girlfriend’s fingers grazing her navel as she tugs her jeans down.

“Step out,” the blonde instructs, and Erin does, shivering as the cool air hits her legs. 

Holtzmann loops her finger into the elastic of Erin’s silky black underwear, pulling her forward and then over her lap. 

Erin’s lungs are at full capacity from the feeling of her hips resting on Holtzmann’s thighs, remembering that the point of contact feels different from this angle.

The engineer smooths the fabric of Erin’s panties, letting her hand rest against Erin’s ass. 

“Ready?” She asks. 

_Duh_ Erin wants to say, but she settles for a squeaky “Yes.”

Erin braces herself for the first swat.

But Holtzmann doesn’t move; her hand doesn’t rise from its resting place. 

Erin wiggles.

“Holtz.”

Finally, Holtzmann brings her hand down. Lightly. It produces the appropriate cracking noise, but it barely stings. She continues like this, peppering Erin’s ass with gentle swats, pausing periodically to caress the physicist’s skin through the fabric. 

This isn’t like any spanking Erin has received or delivered. In any other context the sensation would be pleasant, but now—knowing that eventually Holtzmann is going to turn up the heat—the anticipation is killing her. 

Her fists ball up and her toes curl. 

“You okay, babe?” Holtzmann doesn’t stop her infuriatingly gentle assault on Erin’s ass. 

Erin kicks her legs is frustration. 

“Come now,” the engineer runs the knuckle of her index finger over Erin’s warm skin, “I’m barely touching you—why are you kicking?”

“I need you to spank me,” Erin squirms, struggling to find the right words, “BETTER!”

“I beg your pardon?” 

Erin can hear the smile in Holtzmann’s voice. She groans in response to the thwarted tingling that has built throughout her body.

Holtzmann hooks two fingers into the waistband of Erin’s underwear. She slides them downward, just enough to reveal the top of Erin’s ass, which is barely pink. 

The physicist is tempted to reach back and yank her panties down the rest of the way herself, but she interlaces her fingers in front of her instead. 

“Tell me, love,” Holtzmann runs her fingers over the exposed part of Erin’s ass, “is this better?”

She brings her hand down onto the bare skin rapidly, with an impressive amount of force. The pattern is haphazard and unpredictable, the swats crashing onto unexpected places from unexpected angles. 

Yes. Yes, that is better. Though, Erin notes, the majority of her ass being covered and ignored is more than a little teasing.

The swats also hurt. 

Erin’s legs kick for a different reason now. 

“How,” Holtzmann lands a particularly hard smack, “is this?”

The engineer pauses to lower Erin’s underwear further—just to the middle part of her ass this time, much to Erin's chagrin. 

She starts spanking again, targeting the newly uncovered skin. She unleashes flurries of fast slaps, and then lands a hard and slow one—taking Erin by surprise with every smack. With such a small patch to cover, Erin’s skin reddens fast under Holtzmann’s attention. 

The physicist involuntarily attempts a wiggly escape. 

“Lie still, buttercup,” Holtzmann says as she spanks, “I’m not finished with you yet—and you know that.”

Erin grips Holtzmann’s ankle in an attempt to stop moving, drawing from her girlfriend’s grounded energy. 

The engineer stops again, this time pulling the black silk all the way to Erin’s knees. She has more ground to cover now, so she resumes spanking immediately—determined to have Erin’s lower ass matching her upper. 

Erin closes her eyes and acquiesces to the pain, enjoying the way that it leaves her previously tense shoulders feeling loose, and her other limbs limp. 

Holtzmann stops spanking when Erin’s ass is a uniform red. She runs her tingling fingers over the tingling flesh. 

After a moment, Erin tries to push herself up and off of her girlfriend’s lap, but she finds herself pinned between a strong arm and an even stronger thigh. 

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Uh,” Erin swallows, suddenly feeling fluttery all over again, “we’re not done?”

“I just gave you the spanking that you asked me for,” Holtzmann rubs the redhead’s back as she speaks, “but we haven’t dealt with you massively screwing up those equations, or eating my Pringles, or whatever that last attempt at misbehavior was—what were you going for there, Erin?”

Erin blushes—a ridiculous reaction given her current position—and slumps, burying her head in her hands. 

Holtzmann pulls her girlfriend up onto her lap, chuckling when Erin hides her face in the crook of her neck. 

“You knew,” she murmurs. 

“Yeah,” the engineer laughs, “I knew. But I couldn’t figure out why you weren’t just telling me what you needed.”

“You don’t ever have to tell me,” Erin looks up from her hiding place, “I guess I thought it’d be sexier that way. Like it’d feel more authentic?” 

“Naw,” Holtzmann shakes her head emphatically, “you marching up here and demanding that I spank you? That was hot. ‘Cause it was so _you_.”

“Oh,” Erin smiles softly, “good to know. I will make note of that for future reference.”

“Good,” Holtzmann kisses her girlfriend’s cheek, “but what are we going to do about your string of poorly executed misbehavior?”

Erin bites her lip. 

“I mean,” Holtzmann continues, “you would probably develop some mathematical equation or head to Duane Reade to buy something from the hairbrush aisle.”

Erin flushes and stares at the ground—it is hard to be reminded of your toppish tendencies when your underwear is around your ankles. 

“But I think I’m a little more old school than that,” Holtzmann winks. 

“Old school?” Erin is pretty sure that Holtzmann can feel her quickening heartbeat. 

The engineer stands, helping Erin up in the process. She reaches down to undo the buckle on the thick leather belt around her hips. 

Erin’s knees _buckle_ at that, but Holtzmann smoothly puts an arm out to steady her. The redhead watches, intoxicated, as the engineer slides the belt through the loops on her pants. The physicist isn’t sure exactly why this is making her swoon, but she thinks that it has something to do with the idea that Holtzmann has been wearing this particular implement all day. 

Holtzmann doubles the belt over before gripping it in her right hand. She takes Erin’s elbow and leads her to the wall. 

“Put your hands on the wall,” she instructs, “palms flat.” 

Erin obeys with a shiver. 

The engineer places her hand just below Erin’s belly button, close enough to her entrance to elicit a whimper, adjusting Erin’s position so that she is bent over slightly. 

“How many?” Erin asks. 

“Let’s try for five,” Holtzmann says, brushing Erin’s hair out of her face, “but you tell me if it’s too much.”

The redhead nods and takes a deep breath. 

Holtzmann holds the belt in the center to better be able to control it—not wanting it to slide around and hit the front of Erin’s thighs. 

She brings the belt down across the top of Erin’s ass, striking the area that she spanked first. It makes an impressive noise. 

“Oh,” Erin says, rising up onto her toes as the pain settles into her skin. 

“I thought you might like that,” Holtzmann laughs, “now get your heels back on the floor.”

Erin lowers herself back down, feeling more than prepared to take another four strokes. 

Holtzmann applies the next one to the center of her ass. The line that the belt leaves is fiery, but delightfully incandescent. Erin moans at the feeling. 

The next two strokes come in rapid succession, right across Erin’s thighs. She yelps and reaches back to rub the place where the belt struck. 

“Sorry,” she says, but she doesn’t remove her hand. 

Holtzmann doesn’t find the image in front of her anything but endearing. 

“You want this last one,” she asks, “or are you good?”

“I want it,” Erin snaps her palm back to the wall, wondering where Holtzmann will strike. 

Having enjoyed Erin’s last reaction so much, Holtzmann aims for her girlfriend’s thighs again. 

Erin squeals flattens against the wall, closing her eyes and enjoying the way the cool plaster feels against her warm cheek.

“I’d like to try something.”

When Erin opens her eyes, Holtzmann is sitting on her bed—the restraint straps that anchor under her bed out, and some kind of tiny machine in her hands. 

She is so already exhausted. 

“It’ll be really relaxing,” the engineer must have picked up on her hesitation and its origin, “I was thinking about how stressed you’ve been.”

“Promise you aren’t going to electrocute me?”

Holtzmann’s telltale dimples make an appearance. 

Erin’s eyes widen. 

“It’s completely safe,” Holtzmann explains quickly, “I’m using medical technology here.”

Erin sighs, thinking that she probably trusts Holtzmann more than she should. 

But she makes her way to the bed. 

Holtzmann pulls her up to the headboard, propping a few pillows behind her back and head before binding her wrists and ankles. 

She then grabs the tiny machine. 

“This is basically a glorified TENS unit,” she says, gently stroking Erin’s entrance with her thumb. When Erin relaxes, she takes two tiny electrode pads, placing one below Erin’s clit, and one above it. 

Holtzmann flips a switch, and watches Erin’s face with a curious grin.

The current flows from Holtzmann’s machine to the pads, causing Erin’s muscles to contract rapidly. 

“Um,” the redhead, pulls against her wrist bindings, “woah.”

“That’s the lowest setting,” Holtzmann sounds vaguely professorial, “there are five, ranging from gentle to,” she turns a knob, “very intense.”

“Fuck,” Erin jumps at the rise in current, the electricity creating a sensation that borders on painful—but not the kind that would have her using her safe word. 

Holtzmann turns the machine off. 

“You want to keep going?”

Erin nods enthusiastically, “Please.”

“Alright,” Holtzmann picks up another set of pads, “let’s get this party started.”

She places the second set of pads closer together, on either side of Erin’s clit. 

The engineer then moves to slip behind her girlfriend, sliding her legs under the straps holding the redhead in place. 

She flips the machine on, turning the knob to a current level somewhere in the middle. 

Erin feels as though someone is touching her from under her skin. 

Holtzmann runs her fingertips along her girlfriend’s arm while gently kissing her neck. 

Erin leans back into her, feeling free under the constraint of the leather on her wrists and ankles. 

The electricity pricks and sucks—like an expert lover with a far deeper reach—and that, combined with the feeling of Holtzmann’s lips on her neck, has Erin crying out deliriously.

It doesn’t take long before she comes unfastened. 

The literal electricity pulses through her, manifesting in opiate-laced peaks. She merges into Holtzmann, feeling in that moment like Eve—as if her ribs aren’t her own. 

Once her breathing has slowed, Holtzmann gently removes the electrode pads and Erin's restraints. 

The physicist rests her head in her girlfriend’s lap. 

“Less stressed?” Holtzmann asks, ruffling the redhead’s hair. 

Erin can only manage an unintelligible murmur in response.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oookay. 
> 
> I feel like a I should put a disclaimer about electrode play. Do your research. Don't modify units like Holtz. 
> 
> But I hope that worked for those of you who sent me electricity-play requests. :)
> 
> As always, thanks for the comments and kudos. 
> 
> I'm hoping to be able to write more over break. 
> 
> So send me ideas at:
> 
> http://tenureisfordudes.tumblr.com


	17. Detonation

Sometimes the only way Erin can break Holtzmann’s focus—get her attention—is to touch her. Today she goes for tangling her fingers in the curls just above the nape of her girlfriend’s neck.

Holtzmann closes her eyes upon contact, setting her screwdriver down, contently cat-like for a moment. When she opens them, Erin is smiling at her, all glittery eyes and a scrunched nose.

“What?” Holtzmann purrs, rubbing her head against the physicist’s hand.

“Can I spank you now?”

She giggles after she says it. She hasn’t slipped into top mode. Nothing about this Erin is intimidating, but she still makes Holtzmann’s heart flutter when she stares at her.

It’s a delighted kind of palpitation, as Holtzmann loves when Erin is blissfully delicate. 

“Did I do something?” She asks, though she knows she hasn’t.

Erin bites her lip and shakes her head. Her slightly-too-long-bangs fall into her face, and Holtzmann reaches over to push them away from her forehead.

“Then why?” 

“Just because.”

Erin smiles mischievously, as if she is asking Holtzmann to do something truly delinquent. It’s so darn cute that Holtzmann brushes her lips against her girlfriend’s before she pulls back to nod in the affirmative.

Erin smiles widely and carefully grasps the engineer’s wrist, pulling her out of the lab and into her bedroom.

Holtzmann finds herself over Erin’s knee and it feels like home.

Erin slides her underwear down and they both giggle at the absurdity of this whole ritual—the strangeness of this dance they do particularly apparent without the momentum of crime and punishment driving it.

Erin is reminded of being a child, listening to a friend’s older sister recounting tales of being spanked and feeling just a little bit intoxicated.

She runs her hand over Holtzmann’s ass with child-like wonder, thinking about how lucky she is that she found someone who lets her be so complexly and completely herself.

“You okay up there?” Holtz asks with a wiggle.

“I love you--that's all,” Erin says, bringing her hand down across her target.

She doesn’t feel like spanking especially hard today. She leaves her hand planted after every moderate stroke, caressing and enjoying the way she can feel the warmth spreading into Holtzmann’s skin through her palm.

Holtzmann has never felt so completely relaxed while under Erin’s hand. She stretches her arms and legs, and something like complete contentment settles in her marrow as her girlfriend continues building just the lightest sting in her ass.

They remain like this for a while, until Holtzmann’s skin is rosy and Erin’s arm is tired.

“Roll over,” the physicist taps her girlfriend’s back, “but stay here.”

Holtzmann flips herself, so that she is face up over her girlfriend’s knee, which isn’t an uncomfortable position given the soft bed under her. 

“That was nice,” she smiles up at Erin lazily.

“Thank you,” Erin says, with such sincerity that Holtzmann sobers for a second. 

“Anytime, buttercup,” Holtzmann replies, “now—you’ve got easy access to another part of my anatomy…”

Erin laughs, and graciously trails her fingers from Holtzmann’s stomach to her thighs. Her middle finger finds Holtzmann’s clit—and it doesn’t take much—something about the gentleness of the whole affair has Holtzmann ready, and a few soft, well timed circles and she is _off._ The way she comes isn’t especially gentle, and the intensity rocks her after all of the softness. She claws at the blankets and writhes against Erin, who watches her keenly—taking snapshots of every jolt.

It is the kind of moment that wraps itself around you and makes every fiber warm.

The next day, Holtzmann remembers the warmth—and for a second she deeply regrets having placed a letter of resignation on Jennifer Lynch’s desk.

**

Holtzmann’s thirty-two years on this earth have been punctuated by explosions—each boom bookending a chapter in her still unfolding story.

There are always sparks behind her eyelids; a faint blaring in her ears, and sometimes she smells smoke in the most crystalline of air.

Being the pied piper of pops and bangs, she has come to find comfort in the small and medium sized poofs that seem to follow her.

But when combustion actually occurs, when the flames wither or the force bruises, her first instinct is to stop, drop everything, and roll away from the destruction as fast as she can.

She blew up the lab four hours ago.

That's a slight exaggeration, though there _is_ is a hole in the ceiling, one in the floor, and Erin’s leg is burned—small, but third degree.

She can’t help but think that she could have killed her.

Holtzmann’s parents were killed in a fiery car accident when she was eight years old. Jill was convinced that the junior chemistry set her mother promised to pick up for her was to blame—all of those chemicals in the backseat must have caused the explosion.

She wished for an alternative life, one where her mother had given her up for adoption. She wouldn’t have ever met them—but they’d be alive, out there somewhere making music and raising a daughter who deserved them. 

She was thirteen before someone—a science teacher—told her that cars don’t explode; they ignite, and her packaged chemistry set wouldn’t have impacted the fire.

But by that point the guilt had settled and calcified in her stomach.

She would always consider that her first explosion. 

No one stepped forward to claim her after the accident. Her father came to America as the lead guitarist in a fledgling German rock band, having severed ties with his family long before that tour.

He fell in love with Holtzmann’s eighteen-year-old mother after they met in a desolate diner.

She was studying to be a music teacher and complimented his guitar, eventually finding herself completely enchanted with his shaggy blonde hair and accent. He liked her dimples and her straightforward manner.

They hadn’t planned to be parents, but they were good ones. Holtzmann didn’t have much enthusiasm for music—despite having perfect pitch—but they noticed the way her eyes lit up when she talked about anything scientific. So they sent her to camps, bought her kits, and her dad would drive around on garbage day to pick up any electronics discarded on the curb. Jill would take them apart and put them pack together.

They never did get married.

And her mother’s parents never did approve.

Holtzmann’s social worker thought that the tiny blonde bundle of springs might actually fare better as a ward of the state, after her maternal grandmother said that they would “take her if they had to.”

Sometimes she did.

Her first foster family was just nice enough for eight-year-old Jillian to get attached—but they weren’t happy when she took apart their VCR, or when she turned their toaster into a handmade explosive.

It was fear—not cruelty—that prompted them to ask her social worker to pick her up from the hospital after her minor injuries were treated.

It became a pattern in her file.

Placement with a family.

Something with current and voltage—a microwave, a lamp, a television, a remote controlled car.

And a blast, bigger than the scrappy adolescent who orchestrated it.

She isn’t defiant, they would say, but she is dangerous.

Holtzmann learned that she liked to stay one step ahead of the disappointment in displacement.

Tears and pleading hadn’t worked the first time around, and she felt skinless, like her nerves were exposed, in every subsequent interaction with her social worker—knowing that the woman had seen the depth of her desperation.

So she would pack a suitcase without being told. Hug her foster siblings goodbye before the news was delivered. And climb into the backseat of her social worker’s car with her chin in the air.

When she unknowingly built a nuclear bomb during the demonstration section of her interview at CERN—putting the distracted supervising engineer in a coma—she called Dr. Gorin from Geneva, delivering the news in her own monotone fashion before anyone else could.

It is that impulse that had her writing a hurried, typo-riddled letter of resignation after the explosion in the lab.

She hardens herself, willing a layer of ice to settle between the veins that still carry the love and acceptance of her parents, and her calloused skin.

She ignores the voice telling her to stop and think, to consider the three most important people in her life, because that would require feeling.

And when Holtzmann feels, she _feels_. 

So she tries to run past Abby when she gets back to the firehouse.

The Ghostbusters’ leader is on the phone, red faced and frantic, telling _Jennifer_ that she will take care of it.

It’s Patty who grabs her by the back of her shirt, preventing her escape, and Holtzmann finds herself pushed down into a chair in the kitchen.

She can’t help but stare at the hole in the ceiling—she can see up into her lab from her seat.

“What the fuck, Holtzmann?” Abby whirls around as she hangs up the phone.

Holtzmann shrugs.

“She resigned,” Abby explains to Patty.

“I got that from all your yelling,” Patty says, “what’s going on here, Holtzy?”

Holtzmann’s heart aches at the use of the affectionate nickname.

“What do you mean what’s going on?” The blonde grips the edge of the table for support, “I blew up the lab, and I burned Erin.”

“Patty’s got some guys coming over to fix those holes up real cheap,” the historian’s voice is warm, “and Erin is fine. She is out looking for you right now. She was worried.”

“Why the hell would you resign without talking to us?”

Abby’s voice is less warm, but her tirade is interrupted by the sound of the front door slamming.

Erin appears a moment later. She has kissed Holtzmann’s cheek and tangled her fingers in her girlfriend’s hair before she notices Abby’s glare—and the way that Holtzmann’s eyes are glued to the floor.

“What happened?”

Abby and Patty both look at the engineer.

“I blew two holes in the lab, and I burned you,” Holtzmann ducks her head away from Erin’s touch, “and I’m fully prepared to accept the consequences.”

“What consequences?” Erin asks, with an uneasy glance towards Abby.

“There were no consequences,” Abby assures the redhead, “until Holtzmann took it upon herself to create some.”

“I didn’t think that there was any use in delaying in inevitable,” Holtzmann’s eyes roll towards the ceiling, “I was trying to make this easier on everyone.”

“Well, you didn’t,” Abby growls, “and you should have talked to us.”

“Jill,” Erin places her hand under her girlfriend’s chin, “what did you do?”

“She resigned,” Patty says softly, “welcome to our disaster of the week.”

“I’m sorry,” Erin’s hand stiffens against Holtzmann’s face, “you what?”

“I don’t know why you're all acting like this is outrageous,” the blonde stands, crossing her arms and moving to the other side of the kitchen, “I am clearly a liability.”

“It was one mistake,” Abby softens a little, “we know you take our safety seriously.”

“Not seriously enough,” Holtzmann snaps, gesturing to Erin’s injured leg.

“Baby, let’s talk this through,” Patty sits down, “say you do resign—”

“I _did_.”

“Say it sticks—you just going to keep on living here with us? The non-participatory Ghostbuster?”

 _Oh._.. Holtzmann feels as though she is trying to stay above water just past her nose. She has knowingly and unknowingly orchestrated a lot of explosions in her life, but she has never had this level of tangled, rooted connection to the place she detonated.

She wanted so desperately to run ahead of the aftermath that she didn’t consider how bound she is.

Her job is tied to her family.

She has a family.

She has Erin.

She remembers the way that her body felt over the physicist’s knee yesterday—thermal and tingly.

That layer of ice under her veins thaws just enough to hurt—and now she is on the verge of melting into something mangled and misshapen.

She could have killed Erin, and all she can bring herself to do is keep-chasing invincibility.

“I still have my old apartment,” Holtzmann says, as if that is a viable solution.

“So,” Erin looks stricken and raw, “are you resigning from _us_ too?”

The question hangs cockeyed in the air. Erin’s gaze is relentless. Abby and Patty look as though they would rather be anywhere but in that kitchen.

Holtzmann wishes to plunge a knife into her chest and pull downward, revealing the inner workings of her heart to Erin.

But she cannot open herself—she feels cagey and defensive, even knowing she has no right to be. She has never walked away from an explosion without leaving something behind: her parents, foster parents and siblings, jobs, the person she was before putting that man in a coma.

She just wants to be prepared to relinquish.

“If you want me to,” the engineer is surprised that she can hold Erin’s gaze. It is a terribly unfair tactic—placing the responsibility of choice on her girlfriend.

And Erin is _not_ about to stand for that. She advances on Holtzmann, a picture of controlled fury.

“I have done nothing to indicate that I want that, Jillian Holtzmann,” the redhead is seething, “ _nothing!_.”

“You brought it up,” Holtzmann knows that she sounds childish.

“You just said that you are going to move out,” Erin’s voice drops in volume, “and I know we didn’t move in here as a couple, but I thought. . . I thought that we _lived_ together. I wouldn't want you anywhere else.”

Holtzmann shrugs pathetically, secretly admiring Erin’s willing vulnerability.

“This is insulting,” Erin turns on her heel and walks towards Abby, who throws a comforting arm around her shoulder. Patty gives her arm a squeeze.

“You had to go to the hospital because of me,” Holtzmann’s voice breaks as she sees the new trio of Ghostbusters forming before her.

“You’ve chosen an incredibly selfish way to punish yourself,” the physicist says sadly.

Holtzmann sees it then—a way to effectively end the conversation—to get herself out of the firehouse—to protect Erin from the debris while she processes and _thinks._

“I guess I should have come to you for that, huh?”

Erin turns white, but Holtzmann keeps going:

“You could have yanked me over your knee and spanked me, and that would have fixed everything.”

A cranberry colored blush creeps onto Erin’s cheeks as Patty and Abby look at her in confusion.

Holtzmann sprints toward the door, trying to outrun regret in the realization that she just detonated a bomb without any nuclear materials.

**

The three remaining Ghostbusters sit in silence—each having plopped down into a chair when Holtzmann slammed the door.

Abby and Patty want answers, but they don’t want to ask the questions.

Erin hasn’t felt ashamed of her desires since she and Holtzmann started exploring together, but now she feels sheepish and uncertain in the knowledge that she has been outed.

It is easier to focus on the superficial humiliation, as she isn’t ready to ruminate on the future of her relationship in this moment.

She finally decides to break the silence.

“Sometimes Holtz and I,” she takes a deep breath, “we…”

“I’d expect Holtz to be a bit freak-nasty,” Patty places a comforting hand on Erin’s arm, “but you—it’s good to know there is a little danger under all that tweed.”

Erin smiles gratefully at her friend.

Abby’s forehead is wrinkled with inquisition. “So,” she rests her chin on her knuckles, “did you and Holtzmann blindfold Kevin and leave his naked ass in the pantry?”

“Kevin?” Erin looks scandalized, until Abby shoots her a look that somehow says _don’t look at me like that, you used to regularly throw yourself at him._

The physicist shakes her head emphatically.

“I found him in that state a couple of days ago—I just shut the door and walked away,” Abby shudders.

Realization mutually dawns on the two scientists.

They look at Patty, who is suddenly studying the hole in the ceiling intently.

“Patty!” Erin clasps her hand over her mouth.

“What,” the historian grins, “I can’t enjoy myself sometimes too?”

“But Kevin?” Abby can’t help but grimace.

“He is a good looking little fellow,” Patty says without an ounce of shame, “and surprisingly smart in the sheets.”

Erin feels lighter as she laughs—but she sobers quickly as she remembers Holtzmann’s exit.

She hugs her friends and excuses herself, picking up her phone and shooting off a quick text.

_Tell me where you are and that you are okay. You owe me that._

Holtzmann can’t hold back her tears as she reads the message.

_I’m ok. I’m heading upstate to stay with Dr. G._

It’s a lie—she is sitting on the floor in her old apartment.

**

Doctor Gorin shows up at Holtzmann’s apartment the next day, because as Holtzmann has learned: if you speak her name—she comes.

Never one to mince words, she is questioning the engineer immediately upon entering her apartment. 

“What did you blow up, Jillian?”

Holtzmann’s brain works quickly, deducing that one of the Ghostbusters must have called Rebecca, and her mentor must have realized something was awry if Holtzmann told them that she was upstate with her. 

And of course, being the only person completely privy to Holtzmann’s past, Rebecca would assume that she has run away from an explosion—like she always does. 

Holtzmann was living in a group home for teenaged runaways the first time she snuck into one of Dr. Gorin’s lectures on nuclear engineering. She thought that the brilliant but stilted woman hadn’t noticed the unregistered sixteen year old among the students in the large lecture hall, so she kept going back.

And she didn’t have a copy of the syllabus, so she didn’t know that the tenth class period would be dedicated to the midterm exam. 

She tried to sneak out as Doctor Gorin began to pass out the test booklets, but the professor shot her a look that had her sitting back down with military precision. 

Holtzmann was the last person to finish. Doctor Gorin motioned for her to wait while she graded the booklet.

It was a bloodbath.

“You failed,” she said as she marked the last question with her red pen, “but you do have an understanding of some key components—impressive for someone not in this program—and your answers, though wrong, are demonstrative of a brain that works.”

“Thank you?” Holtzmann ran the toe of her scuffed boot against the classroom floor. 

“Would you like to tell me who you are and what you are doing here?”

Something about the juxtaposition of the woman’s kind eyes and otherwise complete lack of warmth had Holtzmann telling her story, explosions and all. 

Dr. Gorin told her she could continue attending her lectures. 

Three months after their initial meeting, Dr. Gorin brought Holtzmann to a testing center to take the GED.

And a month after that, Holtzmann was applying to Dr. Gorin’s program. 

Her chest always felt warm when Rebecca called her name for attendance, which was never optional in any of her classes. She liked that her name was on the roster.

So as Holtzmann stands in front of the woman who changed her life, she cannot control her tears. 

Dr. Gorin places an awkward, but comforting hand on top of the smaller woman’s head, willing her to stop the display of uncontrolled emotion. 

But Holtzmann can’t. She is all fizzy hiccups and desperate sniffles. 

So her mentor finally resorts to hugging her. It isn’t an especially great hug—Holtzmann has had better, but she feels significantly less alone. 

She is able to calm down enough to tell the story of the explosion in the lab, and the subsequent explosion in the kitchen. 

Doctor Gorin listens, her expression severe as always, but not judgmental. 

She sizes the younger woman up for a moment after Holtzmann finishes her story. 

“Really Jillian,” Doctor Gorin sighs, “don’t you think it is rather egotistical to assume that the only way Dr. Gilbert will be safe is if you don’t work with her anymore?”

“What?” That was _not_ what Holtzmann was expecting her to say. 

“As though you have such a grand impact—I’m sure she has sustained injuries far more severe on those ghost eliminating pilgrimages the four of you go on.” 

“I still burned her, and if she had been three steps to the right—”

“She would have been smart enough to duck out of the way. You feel guilty, and instead of dealing with that, you’ve decided to make a sweeping heroic sacrifice.”

“That isn’t fair,” Holtzmann’s cheeks burn with the knowledge that Dr. Gorin was very, very right. 

“Isn’t it? And when Dr. Gilbert wouldn’t allow you to do that, you lashed out at her—did you want her to end your relationship?”

“I thought she was going to,” Holtzmann whispers. 

“Did she say something that made you think that?” Dr. Gorin presses. 

“No,” the engineer sighs.

“So you convinced yourself that you were a danger to her and that she was going to sever ties with you, the former relying on dubious evidence at best, and the latter having none.”

“Okay, but—”

“That,” Dr. Gorin places her hand on Holtzmann knee, “is just bad science, and I’ve taught you better.”

Holtzmann opens and closers her mouth, trying to think of a rebuttal—but she realizes that there isn’t one. 

“Shit,” she says, closing her eyes and leaning into her mentor, “what do I do?”

“Well—I know that it does not involve sitting on the floor of your apartment with me, because my knees cannot take another second of this.”

**

Holtzmann stares in the mirror, wondering what it is about her Erin fell in love with. Her confidence is rooted, for the most part, in her ability to love herself the way her parents had, which was solid acceptance and little scrutiny of what made her lovable.

But right now, she wishes she knew. She’d like to make sure that those parts and pieces are visible when she walks back into the firehouse. 

**

Erin is taken aback when Holtzmann asks if she can come over to talk to her. Her anger, and God, she is angry, hasn’t stopped her from thinking of the Firehouse as Holtzmann’s home. 

It’s only been twenty-four hours since the engineer left, but her absence has felt enduring and deafening. 

**

Their reunion hurts. 

It’s like someone has stripped them of their skin—every nerve is exposed and vulnerable. 

The air in Holtzmann’s lab stings.

Erin’s gaze feels like fire.

Holtzmann’s voice scrapes.

And when they brush against each other--they both bite back whimpers. 

“Welcome back,” Erin says quietly. 

Holtzmann crumbles. She has never walked through the aftermath of an explosion. She hasn’t come face to face with what, or who, she left behind. 

She didn’t seek seconds chances—she made new opportunities. 

Erin is standing before her, and she can’t bring herself to meet her gaze, but her essence is so familiar and so comforting, that she wants to _beg_.

Holtzmann is a geyser; overtaken by wildly flowing tears and hiccups that seem to originate in her soul. 

And Erin knows that touching her is going to be painful—that Holtzmann’s flesh is going to feel like acid against her skinless arms, but she doesn’t know if she could ever be angry or hurt enough to _leave_ her like that. 

Not when Holtzmann is dissolving in front of her. 

So she pulls the engineer over to the couch before sitting down. 

Holtzmann doesn’t resist as Erin tugs her into her arms. 

She fits so well. 

Their limbs share space as if they were designed to slide together, and they eliminate any and all air between them as they sink into the cushions. 

It does hurt. 

But Erin buries her face into Holtzmann’s hair and holds onto her as if the mere act of doing so will heal and mend. 

They stay like that for some time—until Holtzmann’s sobs slow, and they are breathing in time with one another. 

The engineer starts to push herself up, but Erin doesn’t release her. 

“No,” she says, voice muffled by Holtzmann’s curls, “once we move, we start talking.”

“I know,” Holtzmann sighs, “but don’t you think we should?”

Erin’s arms drop to her sides, and Holtzmann pushes herself back so that she is facing her girlfriend. 

She misses the contact instantly. 

But she her clasps her hands in front of her, before clearing her throat. 

Erin feels the anger she pushed to the side creeping back, as Holtzmann’s guilty expression reminds her of just what she has been through over the last day. 

“I want to say first,” the engineer’s voice is almost as small as she is, “that none of this had anything at all to do with you, Erin. You’re wonderful, and you’ve been wonderful.”

“I know,” Erin says coolly. She isn’t feeling giving enough to inform Holtzmann that _she_ has a large role in physicist’s self-confidence—that Erin would have blamed herself for everything that ensued in her previous relationships. 

 

“Good. Next, I thought that I would talk a little bit about some explosions in my past. I think that, uh, blowing the lab up brought up some _stuff_. And maybe if you already knew some of this, I don’t know, I guess. . .” 

Holtzmann looks like a nervous orator, and Erin realizes that she must’ve _practiced_ what she was going to say. Her heart softens at the thought of her always off the cuff girlfriend rehearsing. 

The physicist reaches for her the blonde's hand, giving it a squeeze. 

“I’m listening, Jillian.” 

Holtzmann tells Erin about her parents first. Erin jumps in when she talks about her chemistry set, ready to inform her that there was no way she was responsible for their death. Holtzmann smiles softly when she tells Erin about her seventh grade science teacher telling her the same thing. 

She talks about foster care and explosions. 

And meeting Rebecca Gorin. 

And the explosion at CERN.

And wanting to protect Erin from her combustions, and wanting to protect herself from the sting of what she had convinced herself would be inevitable rejection. 

Erin is so tempted to just let her off the hook. Holtzmann looks defeated, and she has never shared so many pieces of herself, and God she hasn’t had it easy, but. . . 

“You should have known, Holtzmann. You should have known that I wasn’t going to let you get away with running, and you should have known that _none_ of us would have rejected you over an accident. I’d rather be blown up a hundred times than have you walk out on me.”

“I know,” Holtzmann fights back more tears, marveling that she has any left to shed. 

“I have things to say about your past. I’m going to tell you how you didn't deserve any of what you’ve been through. I have questions about your parents. God, I didn’t even know you had parents, Holtz. But right now—I have to tell you how disappointing it is that, after everything we've built together, you didn’t trust _us_ even to realize that you didn’t need to run.” 

“I know,” Holtzmann struggles to hold her voice steady, “and you should be really, really mad at me. I know it doesn’t fix it, or make up for it, but I came back. I’ve never done that before. Hell, I’ve never had a reason to do that before.”

“I’m really glad you did,” Erin says, anger fading to something duller and less consuming. 

“I hate that I disappointed you,” Holtzmann moves to rest her forehead on one of the legs that Erin has tucked up on the couch. 

“We can fix that,” Erin lets her hand rest against the engineer’s forehead, “disappointment is repairable.”

The physicist can feel the blonde relax into her—relief palpable—as she massages her scalp.

“Thank God,” Erin continues, “if it wasn’t, I’d have burned a lot of bridges.”

“What do I need to do?” Holtzmann asks, feeling small and sounding childlike. 

“First, promise me that you won’t jump ship like that on me again—”

“I won’t.”

“And take off your pants.”

It’s a bold move, but Erin knows it was the right one when Holtzmann doesn’t hesitate. She stands up and undoes the button on her trousers, letting the baggy fabric fall to her knees. 

The physicist grabs her girlfriend’s wrist, gently tugging and forcing Holtzmann to waddle closer to her. 

“Step out.”

Again, the blonde obeys. Erin points to the floor and quirks an eyebrow. Holtzmann slowly lowers herself, not breaking eye contact, and Erin can’t help but shiver in arousal. 

The wood bites into the skin on Holtzmann’s knees, but she finds the sensation pleasant and grounding. 

“I want to show you how much you mean to me,” Erin threads her fingers into Holtzmann’s hair, “I want to mark you. Bruise you. Make you whimper. And I need you to promise that you’ll tell me if it’s too much. I’m going to make you want to tear your skin off—but I want you to enjoy it.”

The sound that Holtzmann makes is somewhere between a squeak and a moan. 

“I’m going to need something a little more affirmative than that,” Erin says with a grin.

“I promise,” Holtzmann manages. 

“Good.” 

Erin shifts, and guides her girlfriend over her knee. Holtzmann’s breath catches when her hips make contact with Erin’s thighs, the familiarity overwhelming.

Erin starts spanking moderately, letting her hand fall once every few seconds. 

“Erin,” Holtzmann says, just as her skin is starting to warm. 

Erin stops and gently pats her fabric of her girlfriend’s underwear. 

“Yes?”

Holtzmann doesn’t think that her cheeks could possibly burn harder.

“About what I said,” she swallows, “in front of Abby and Patty—“

Erin isn’t going to make this easier.

“Yes?”

“I shouldn’t have acted like this is something we should be ashamed of,” the engineer sighs, “I was just—“

“Trying to push me away,” the redhead says simply.

“Yes,” Holtzmann’s form sags.

“That was a misguided effort,” Erin continues patting, her voice dropping into a register that makes Holtzmann’s stomach flip, “because now the sounds they inevitably hear are going to make a lot more sense, and they are going to picture you right here, over my knee, which isn’t especially embarrassing for me.”

Holtzmann was wrong—about her cheeks—they are now on _fire_. She squirms desperately. 

Erin takes that as her cue to give her girlfriend something to squirm about. She yanks Holtzmann underwear down and brings her hand down harder and faster. 

Once Holtzmann’s ass is a uniform red, she stops. She snakes a hand between Holtzmann’s legs, finding her clit and circling it lightly. 

Holtzmann moans in surprise, but just as she starts to recognize the rhythm, Erin pulls her hand away. 

“On your feet,” the physicist says firmly. 

Holtzmann stands reluctantly. 

“You can go fetch the cane.”

The engineer makes her way over to the implement drawer, and Erin takes the thin piece of bamboo from her as she holds it out. 

“Let’s do this the traditional way,” Erin grabs Holtzmann’s wrist, pulling her over to the table, “six of the best—you’ll count, thank me for them, and ask for the next one. Miscount or move out of place, and that stroke doesn’t count. Now, over you go.”

After she bends over, Erin uses the tip of the cane to push Holtzmann’s legs apart. She then taps the cane against her girlfriend’s skin—three times—before bringing it down. 

Hard. 

Holtzmann grips the edge of the table to stay in place. 

“One,” she says quietly, “thank you. May I have another?”

“Certainly,” Erin taps her again, “but I want those palms flat against the table.”

Holtzmann whimpers and releases her grip. 

Erin brings the cane down again. 

The blonde manages to get through four strokes without issue. 

Then the fifth one falls, and the searing pain has her reaching back. She realizes her mistake instantly, snatching the offending hand back and placing it in front of her. 

But it is too late. 

“You were doing so well,” Erin says, rubbing Holtzmann’s back, “but rules are rules, darling.” 

She brings the cane down again, exactly where it had fallen seconds before. Holtzmann manages to stay in position and count. 

Erin delivers the final stroke across Holtzmann’s thighs, and Holtzmann yelps impressively.

“Oh,” the physicist chuckles, “Patty and Abby definitely heard that.”

“Erin,” Holtzmann groans, feeling herself grow wetter at the blush-inducing thought. 

Erin carefully slips two fingers inside her in response, curling them slowly. Teasingly. 

She keeps it up just long enough that Holtzmann thinks maybe, just maybe, the physicist is going to see this through. 

But when she clenches around Erin’s fingers, Erin pulls them away. 

Holtzmann stomps her foot in frustration. 

It's adorable, and Erin works very hard to keep her face impassive. 

“Really, I should leave you hanging for a day. That’s how long it took you to get your ass back here. Think you could take that?”

“No,” Holtzmann stands up, turning around to face her girlfriend, “please don’t do that to me.”

“Sit,” Erin commands in response.

Holtzmann’s ass is burning. She can feel every welt the cane left when she pulls herself up onto the table. 

“Hands on your head,” the redhead instructs, and Holtzmann winces as obeys. 

She kicks her legs, trying to rid herself of the desperation building in her stomach, but the movement presses her ass into the table. 

There is no way for the engineer to get comfortable.

This is Erin’s intention, of course. After a moment, she pulls Holtzmann to the edge of the table, where she can crouch down and press her tongue through her girlfriend’s entrance. 

The engineer instinctively reaches for Erin’s hair, but Erin slaps the inside of her thigh—hard—and Holtzmann quickly snaps her hand back up onto her head. 

Erin finishes by grazing Holtzmann’s clit with her teeth before, once again, pulling a way. 

“What has gotten into you?” Holtzmann asks, with a moan and a pout that just have Erin wanting to keep her in exquisite misery indefinitely. 

“I thought you might benefit from a firmer hand tonight,” Erin says, and when Holtzmann’s cheeks redden, she knows she was right. Holtzmann would’ve fought tenderness, and felt smothered by sweetness.

The physicist retrieves a wide leather strap from the implement drawer. 

Holtzmann bites her lip. 

“I want you to lie down, flat on your stomach,” Erin instructs, snapping her strap between her hands. 

Holtzmann nods, feeling like a miniaturized version of herself. Muted, mellow, and so grateful that Erin is going to catch her when she buckles under the weight of submission. 

She stretches out onto the table, facing Erin, who is looking a little softer herself. 

The strap isn’t soft. Not at all. With Holtzmann lying down, Erin can swing hard. 

And she _does._

The redhead moves quickly too, barely giving her girlfriend time to catch her breath before the next stroke falls. 

The strap paints thick, fiery lines across Holtzmann’s ass. She writhes and whimpers, eyes squeezed shut and fists balled, but Erin keeps going. 

And going. 

And going. 

Strapping over the welts left by the cane, and finding previously untouched skin to redden and bruise on Holtzmann’s thighs. 

Holtzmann doesn’t realize that Erin has stopped until she feels her girlfriend’s hand on the small of her back. 

“We’re almost done,” Erin says softly, “sit back up—hands on your head again.”

The engineer gingerly pushes herself up as Erin sits back down on the couch. 

“How are you feeling?” 

“Very sore.”

“Good.”

“Like my vag is going to simultaneously implode and explode.”

“Even better.”

“Happy.”

“Me too.”

Erin smiles, crooking a finger, and Holtzmann slides off the table. She drapes herself across the redhead’s knee, enjoying the warmth that comes with physical contact, while simultaneously cursing the way it makes the situation between her legs _worse_. 

Erin’s hand falls steadily, stinging so much more than it had earlier—igniting the welts and bruises left by the cane and the strap. She spanks thoroughly, carefully giving attention to every inch of Holtzmann’s skin. 

And Holtzmann melts. She wants to wrap herself up in this feeling—the way her body goes delightfully limp and her mind settles. 

“You are going to have some lovely marks tomorrow,” Erin says as she spanks, “and to make sure they stick around for a little while—I’m going to repeat this hand spanking every night for the next week.”

Holtzmann only quivers in response. 

Erin finishes with ten hard swats, and then she pulls Holtzmann up, only to plop her directly down onto a hard wood chair.

Holtzmann hisses as Erin pulls the engineer’s legs over her shoulders. Her tongue finds Holtzmann’s clit easily, and Holtz rewards her with a gorgeous moan as Erin flicks her tongue over it. 

She slips her fingers inside Holtzmann’s entrance next. That is easy too, because Holtzmann is absolutely drenched. She curls upward before drawing her fingers out, repeating this pattern as Holtzmann tangles a hand in her hair.

Erin tightens the muscles in her arm in response, fucking Holtzmann harder as she takes her clit into her mouth. 

Holtzmann explodes, and there is no shrapnel, or glass, or fire. Just ecstasy, and warmth, and serenity. She breaks into glowing, silky, rounded fragments, which crash against Erin, leaving the physicist soft and glimmering.

She tumbles forward after the coils of pleasure have made their way through her, and Erin’s face meets hers. 

They kiss.

“Thank you,” Holtzmann says as she pulls away, resting her forehead against Erin’s. 

“I love you,” the redhead says, interlacing her fingers with her girlfriend’s. 

Holtzmann, in this moment, isn’t afraid of her tendency to detonate, realizing that she has survived an explosion without leaving anything behind. And perhaps this unusual skillset could be put to good use. 

Like having Erin, in all her current toppy glory, writhing under her as her tongue sparks and her fingers flicker. 

She begins by biting Erin’s lip, running her tongue over the flesh trapped between her teeth. 

Holtzmann can feel the voltage building.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is anyone still out there?
> 
> I'm popping out of my self-imposed exile (I won't bore ya'll with the details; things have just been crazy and life is kicking my ass) to post this chapter. 
> 
> Today is my favorite (funny, compassionate, supportive, and smart) little trouble maker's birthday. So I finished this arc, which I started back in January, in honor of that. 
> 
> So. I hope she likes it, and I hope you do too.
> 
> Hopefully I'll actually be blogging and reconnecting with people in the near future. But until then, take care. 
> 
> xxxx


	18. Relinquish Pt. 1

Erin knows that a secondary side effect of relinquishing control, of situational subservience, is the deep and profound feeling that the person who took the reins, who saw you through the process of letting go, is some kind of all-powerful deity.

She often feels that way about Holtzmann after giving herself over to her completely. Like her girlfriend created the stars and planets with her bare hands and a few select pieces of lab equipment.

So she knows why the blonde is sticking so close to her the morning after their reunion and subsequent session, while looking at her like everything cosmic in the world originated with a mark on Erin’s whiteboard.

And Erin would sprinkle stardust on everything Holtzmann comes into contact with if she was capable, just as she would clean up the remnants of the bomb the engineer detonated if she could.

She settles for gently tickling her girlfriend’s side before letting her hand rest on her arm.

Holtzmann is sharing space with Patty and Abby for the first time since she came back, and Erin’s touch is keeping her from retreating.

She wrote a letter of reapplication to the Ghostbusters for Abby—full of all of the reasons she loves her job and her friends—and emailed the carefully drafted document to her, CCing Patty.

Abby responded with the words “heart emoji,” prompting Patty to reply asking why Abby didn’t just _use_ the heart emoji, before sending one of her own to Holtzmann.

The email chain had the engineer feeling secure in her place within her family, but no less embarrassed about her outburst.

Patty, never one for drama, cuts the air in their communal office with her always-keen voice.

“Man,” she says, “this is awkward, and it doesn’t need to be. People can do whatever crazy ass shit they want in their bedroom. You two beautiful nerds do you. And I’ll keep doing me some Kevin.”

“Patricia,” Holtzmann’s expression straddles the line between shocked and maybe just a _little_ turned on.

“And I for one have no experience with these things, but I can see the appeal of spanking any and all of you,” Abby says, “blowing up things, jumping into portals, listening to Hamilton at three o’clock in the morning.”

“Uh,” Patty raises her hand, “one of those things is not like the other.”

“I dream about fighting wars and losing duels,” Abby turns to make her way to her computer, ready to start her workday.

“Yeah, but those lyrics, baby,” Patty follows her, arguing that same sacrifices are necessary.

Erin wraps her arms around Holtzmann once they are alone.

“That wasn’t so bad,” she remarks.

“It wasn’t,” the engineer smiles, “everything is back to normal. We can totally skip that little spanking you planned for tonight.”

“We absolutely cannot,” Erin chuckles, knowing that Holtzmann would only be disappointed if she gave in, “or any of the others.”

“It was worth a shot,” the engineer says with a grin.

She finds herself dragging her heels that night after she has showered, as submission is counter intuitive to Holtz, even when she wants it.

So she crosses her arms as she stands before Erin, hair damp and smelling of soap.

Erin furrows her eyebrows, mimicking her girlfriend’s stance.

“Ready?” She asks.

“I don’t know,” Holtzmann drawls, “how does one prepare?”

“By sliding their shorts off,” the physicist smiles with a touch of malice.

Holtzmann feels her cheeks warm, just a little, as she pushes her pajama shorts off her hips. She steps out of them and shoves them aside with her foot.

Erin takes a moment to run her fingertips along the bare skin on Holtzmann thighs, before grasping her wrist and pulling her across her knee.

Holtzmann’s ass is artfully bruised, the purple marks distributed evenly across her pale skin. She has enjoyed sitting on them all day, feeling Erin’s unyielding presence even when the taller woman was out of sight.

Erin’s hand feels heavier and harder when she brings it down, and Holtzmann finds herself struggling to stay still after about twenty swats. Her skin reddens quickly, rose complementing violet, and eventually she finds herself thawing into the bed and Erin’s thighs.

Erin stops and gently caresses the skin she just warmed.

“Er,” Holtzmann props her chin up on top of her hands, “maybe tomorrow, you could use something else? After your hand?”

“What would you like me to use?”

“I want you to choose,” Holtzmann answers, pushing herself up before leaning back into her girlfriend’s arms.

“Hmmm,” Erin kisses Holtzmann shoulder, “maybe a hairbrush?”

Holtzmann’s shiver is the only answer Erin needs.

**

By the end of the week, the two women have made their way through a significant portion of their implement collection. Holtzmann’s bruises have merged and changed, but they haven’t faded, and she is more than a little melancholy to not have an inevitable spanking looming over anymore.

So she celebrates her unwanted freedom by making about twenty _too_ many jokes about Erin’s tiny bow tie.

“Did you have to ask Trump to help you tie it?” is the one that does her in. Erin drops her pen and grabs for Holtzmann’s wrist, pulling her out of the communal space and into the lab.

It is hot in there, and Holtzmann is already sweating as Erin yanks down her oil stained breeches, missing a button and sending it flying in the process.

She is pressed against the table as Erin uses her foot to spread her legs apart.

“Stay like that,” the physicist says, “five minutes. Don’t move. Don’t speak.”

“But—”

“Alright, let’s make it six.”

Holtzmann closes her mouth and shudders, feeling the unmistakable flutter in her stomach that indicates she has gotten herself into more trouble than she intended.

It’s delicious.

Erin, for her part, is watching her girlfriend hawkishly, arms crossed and blood hot.

Time stops, and Holtzmann is convinced that Erin is keeping her over that table longer than six minutes. Her knees start to weaken.

The physicist eventually busies herself by removing the hooks from the end of a rubber tarp strap.

It’s torture for Holtzmann—hearing Erin moving, but not being able to see what she is doing—especially when the redhead slaps the tarp strap against her palm.

The sound registers between Holtzmann’s legs.

“Ten,” Erin says once six minutes have passed, “count.”

Holtzmann still doesn’t know what Erin is holding, but her racing heart stops her from looking back.

“Okay,” she says softly.

Erin brings the makeshift implement across the top of Holtzmann’s ass. The engineer gasps at the new sensation, and in her attempt to mentally place it, forgets to count.

“Not starting off well,” the taller woman says, “let’s try that again.”

The strap falls again, and Holtzmann manages to say “one.”

By the eighth stroke, she has it figured out.

“Nine! And that’s a tarp strap.”

“Very good, darling.”

Erin rewards her with another thuddy red stripe.

Holtzmann’s ass aches when Erin finishes, and she whines when Erin lifts her onto the table.

Her whine transforms into a moan as Erin pushes her tongue into her entrance.

“Fuck,” the engineer says, falling back onto her elbows.

“Wow,” Erin says as she replaces her tongue with two fingers, “does being spanked turn you on?”

“Erin,” Holtzmann rasps, “I’m going to ruin you.”

“That is my reward for giving you what you ask for?”

Erin curls her fingers harder, using her thumb to circle her girlfriend’s clit, and soon Holtzmann is in space, discovering new constellations. She grins deliriously as Erin guides her back down to earth, feeling the aftershocks as she goes limp against the table.

“Now, will you stop making tiny bow tie jokes and let me get some work done?”

Erin is smirking.

A little too cockily for Holtzmann’s taste.

The engineer pushes herself up quickly, unbuttoning Erin’s skirt and dropping it to the floor in a flash.

Holtzmann pushes Erin over the table, and slips her hand between the physicist’s legs before Erin has time to process what is happening.

She is, as Holtzmann suspected, already drenched. So the blonde wastes no time in thrusting her fingers inward, eliciting a beautiful groan from Erin.

And another louder, more guttural moan when she sinks her teeth into the side of Erin’s hip.

Just as Erin is starting to feel ecstasy creeping in her stomach, Holtzmann pulls her fingers out, leaving Erin with a throbbing mark on her hip and a markedly torturous throbbing between her thighs.

The physicist cannot believe that Holtzmann is pulling this _now_ after revving her up for hours with her jokes and prodding.

“Holtzmann, if you don’t finish what you’ve started, I’ll do it myself.”

She demonstrates for a moment, fingers dancing, before Holtzmann grabs her hand.

“I want you to wait for me,” the engineer says sweetly, “I’ll make you come again and again if you listen to me. If you’re _good_  for me.”

Erin’s eyes narrow.

“Fine,” she says evenly, replacing her own skirt before stalking out of the lab and back to the office.

Holtzmann follows, excited to watch Erin come apart at her perfectly tailored seams.

Erin keeps working, with some understandable difficulty, shifting periodically to try to alleviate the distracting pressure that Holtzmann built.

Holtzmann gazes at her, delighted at the trouble she has caused, waiting for Erin to give in a bit: for her shoulders to sag, her bottom lip to protrude, any indication that Holtzmann has won.

But the engineer pushed Erin over that table while she was still reveling in her control over Holtzmann, high on sovereignty and her sway, and Holtzmann didn’t dismantle that. She just introduced a wave of frustration.

And Erin decides to deal with that frustration in the only way a top can.

She grabs Holtzmann’s wrist, pulling her back towards the lab.

She opts for an old classic this time around, sitting down on a chair and pulling her girlfriend in front of her.

She is careful to undo each button this time, but she still yanks Holtzmann’s pants down with enough purposeful force to make the blonde a little apprehensive.

She just uses her hand. But oh, it doesn’t take much—not after what Holtzmann’s skin has already been through—and the smaller woman is wiggling in no time.

Erin takes her time, working through her frustration and feeling less incensed by the second, even with the lack of release for her lower half.

When Holtzmann’s ass is blazing, and the engineer is panting, Erin places her on her feet.

“That isn’t what I meant by being ‘good,’” the engineer pouts.

“You didn’t specify.”

Erin turns on her heel and walks out of the lab, palm welcomely burning.

Holtzmann cannot calculate how she lost that round, but she vows not to lose the next one: Erin will bend for her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The second part will be up soon.
> 
> Harass me on tumblr if that is your thing: tenureisfordudes.tumblr.com
> 
> Thanks for reading and reviewing this super niche piece of writing of mine; it certainly wouldn't be eighteen chapters long if ya'll weren't engaging with it. 
> 
> <3
> 
> Oh! And special thanks to Tigerlo for her lovely feedback, and imhereforholtz for inspiring this in every way possible.


	19. Relinquish pt. 2

Erin’s respite is brief, and soon she is struggling just enough in sitting still to have Holtzmann feeling smug. But the physicist has a bloodhound’s nose for her girlfriend’s hubris, and she only tolerates the engineer’s gloating for about twenty-five minutes.

She doesn’t pull her into the lab this time. No, she is too embittered and bothered to concern herself with Holtzmann’s modesty.

But she does send her to get the bath bush, knowing that is the fastest way to make her girlfriend’s dimpled face fall.

It works.

“I haven’t seen that it weeks,” Holtz says, a picture of wide eyed innocence, “you must have lost it.”

“If it is missing, you and I can take a trip to Duane Reade right now to buy a new one. Maybe I’ll try a few options out right there in the aisle—”

“You wouldn’t do that.”

“I think you are severely underestimating my current mood.”

“I’ll go look for it.”

Holtzmann returns with the bath brush and a smaller hairbrush.

“I was thinking,” she says, keeping a respectable distance between herself and her girlfriend, “isn’t your arm getting tired? Maybe this hairbrush would be better. For you, I mean.”

“My arm is fine,” Erin remarks, taking both implements, “but I’d be happy to give you an additional spanking with the hairbrush?”

“No,” the engineer says quickly, “that is really okay.”

“Good,” Erin helps Holtzmann out of her pants, “now get up on the table. All fours.”

“Can’t I just bend over it?”

“What do you think?”

Holtzmann wisely decides to keep her mouth shut and do what she is told, insides turning enough to make her pleasantly lightheaded.

Erin taps the bath brush against Holtzmann’s ass gently, flipping it to run the bristles across her skin before turning it back over.

“Don’t worry about counting, darling, just focus on the sensation. And maybe give a passing thought to my view—the way you look up on this table.”

Erin doesn’t start with a hard, slow whack like Holtzmann expects her to. Instead, she unleashes a volley of swats onto her girlfriend’s skin.

After fifteen, Holtzmann involuntarily raises up onto her feet, reeling from the intensity of the blows.

“Knees,” Erin says, placing a guiding hand on Holtzmann’s back, landing another five strokes once Holtzmann is back in place.

The sight of Holtzmann quivering has, once again, satiated a good portion of Erin’s desire.

And looking up at her, the engineer realizes that she miscalculated just how long Erin could live on the gratification of topping her.

Her concerns are confirmed when the physicist thumbs her clit, looking something close to content with making Holtzmann come.

And she does, curling two fingers inside the blonde as the flat of her palm provides just enough friction against her clit to send Holtzmann orbiting.

She eventually lands, cheek against the table and bones melting from the atmosphere change.

“If you don’t take care of me soon,” Erin sounds light years away, “we are going to keep doing this, and I don’t know how much more your ass can take.”

Competition manifests like ice in Holtzmann’s veins, and she pushes herself up to glare at Erin.

“You aren’t behaving, buttercup,” she says, still breathing heavily, “and I’m not going to get you off until you do.”

“I’m just releasing some of the tension you bestowed upon me,” the physicist shrugs, “I haven’t touched myself. I waited like you asked.”

“Maybe you should just touch yourself, then. If this is how it’s going to be.”

Erin doesn’t want that.

But she also cannot figure out how to give in—not from here—when she has been drinking dominance and subsisting on control.

Holtzmann wants her to beg, but beseeching, wooing words catch in her throat and feel artificial on her tongue.

So she rolls her eyes.

“Well, I think I’ve won,” the physicist says haughtily, “if your next move is to give up.”

If Holtzmann was calmer, she could refute that seven different ways without breaking a sweat.

But her ass is aching, and her skin is burning with the desire to defeat, so her reaction is less cerebral and more instinctual.

The engineer grabs Erin’s wrist roughly, but she stops herself from yanking Erin towards her, realizing that the movement will only serve to instill more defiance in the taller woman.

Instead, she runs her thumb gently over the delicate skin on Erin’s wrist.

It’s then that Erin falters, just for a moment, eyes wide and her teeth against her lip.

Holtzmann has the image memorized before Erin masks it with nonchalance.

_Ah._

Holtzmann sits down in a chair, tugging her girlfriend in front of her, and it is amazing how Erin’s demeanor changes when Holtzmann’s fingers reach for the button on her pants.

“You are so wound up, Buttercup,” Holtzmann says as she slides both layers of Erin’s clothing off her hips, “you’re acting out instead of being good for me—and you want to be good for me, don’t you?”

For Erin, there is something so intoxicating about giving herself over to the woman who so freely relinquishes to her. Submission is like a moonbeam, brushing across her skin, illuminating her vulnerability and leaving her twinkling.

She nods, eyes downcast and skin flushing.

“Tell me what I should do with you,” Holtzmann’s voice is bewitching, “what do you think your behavior warrants?”

Erin tucks her chin into her shoulder in response.

“Tell me,” the engineer encourages gently, “I know you can do it.”

Erin swallows involuntarily, “you should, uh, spank me.”

“Then I guess you’d better get over my knee.”

The physicist lowers herself, whimpering as her hips connect with Holtzmann’s thighs, their role reversal viscerally evident in that action.

Holtzmann places her hand on the small of her girlfriend’s back, smiling when Erin shivers a bit.

And then she brings her hand down, finding a steady, slow rhythm.

Erin tenses at first, clasping her hands in front of her.

It takes about twenty swats before she relaxes into the sting.

Holtzmann intends it to be light, wanting Erin to keep shimmering in submission, but she picks up the pace enough to make Erin’s breath catch.

She is satisfied when she feels Erin melt into her thighs, her hand moving to clasp the engineer’s ankle.

Holtzmann helps the wobbly-kneed woman up, but Erin clings to her with such force that the blonde finds herself pressed back into the chair.

“Baby,” she whispers, pressing kisses against Erin’s collarbone.

Eventually Erin feels like she is made of solid matter again, and she pulls her head up from the engineer’s shoulder to look at her.

“Are you ready to convince me to let you come now?” Holtzmann asks with a dimpled smile.

Erin moans, once again aware of the pulsing between her legs.

“Please,” she says, with such a genuine sense of longing that Holtzmann finds it hard to push her farther.

“Please what, baby?”

“Make me come.”

“Be specific. What do you want?”

“You inside me. And…your tongue.”

Holtzmann slides out from under Erin before pulling her to the edge of the chair.

She starts with long, teasing licks from the physicist’s entrance upward.

Erin trembles, fighting to keep herself upright on the chair, especially when Holtzmann lets her tongue linger, tracing soft circles around her clit.

Holtzmann then slips one finger into Erin, twisting it softly for moment before adding a second and curling. She takes Erin’s clit into her mouth, flicking her tongue over it.

Erin’s head rolls back as her form edges towards zero gravity.

Holtzmann senses her shift to weightlessness and stills, fingers and tongue unmoving.

The physicist thrashes and groans.

“H-h-Holtzmann, please, please don’t stop. For the love of God, keep going. Fuck me, please.”

Holtzmann smiles triumphantly, resisting the urge to ask if _that was so hard,_ and obeys.

Erin bursts. She belongs to the stars and Holtzmann as she buries her fingers in her girlfriend’s curls, body convulsing in response to Holtzmann’s crooking and sucking.

Five minutes later, they are in Holtzmann’s bed. Their legs and fingers are entangled, and they can see stars, even though it is only late afternoon. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, these chapters are so much shorter when I'm not writing angsty back stories. 
> 
> Now taking ideas for future arcs. You can message me on my little blog: tenureisfordudes.tumblr.com


	22. Traditions and Traditional

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, anyone who is still chillin' in this fandom. 
> 
> My challenging new job is kicking my ass, and I don't have much time to write. However,  
> if you are interested in F/F spanking (if you aren't, maybe don't read this chapter), I've been posting real life drabbles on my tumblr: tenureisfordudes.tumblr.com. 
> 
> They are about things I've done or I'd like to do with my adorable girlfriend, who also writes the occasional story. 
> 
> Just search for "spanking" on my blog, and they'll pop up. 
> 
> Happy New Year!

Holtzmann’s knees are numb from leaning her weight against them on the dashboard, as they always are on December 28th. 

She sneaks a glance at Dr. Gorin.

The older woman’s eyes don’t leave the road, though it’s clear from the way the corners of her mouth turn up that she can feel her protégé’s gaze. 

This is a sluggish foxtrot that they do once a year; Dr. Gorin takes Holtzmann to visit her parents’ grave. 

It’s easier for the engineer, somehow, to mask her still stinging grief with petulant reluctance. 

It was a more fitting accessory when she was sixteen—the first time Gorin had suggested this road trip, but there is comfort for Holtzmann in pretending that she is being forced. 

So Dr. Gorin doesn’t call her on the eye rolling and slouching.

And Holtzmann drags her teeth across the highway, as eight restless hours pass her by. 

The engineer wasn’t sure how to explain this ritual to Erin. She was tempted to just leave, to reappear after seventeen hours—sixteen on the road, and one at the cemetery—but she has learned a lot about trust and relationships from her girlfriend. 

And disappearing would surely worry and disappoint her. 

Still, her impulse towards secrecy and her desire to take less than she gives wouldn’t allow her to just be open. 

To say, _hey, buttercup, I have the strange ritual where my mentor drags me to my parent’s burial site. It is painful, but it is the closest thing I have to a family tradition. Oh, and in order to not completely fall apart, I pretend like I hate going. Dr. Gorin plays along. I’m not sure where you fit into all of this yet._

So Holtzmann woke Erin up at two o’clock in the morning, to tell her that she was leaving on a quick day trip at three. 

“Did you just plan this?” Erin tried to make sense of Holtzmann’s ramblings in her groggy state. 

“No,” Holtzmann said, “I do it every year.”

Erin’s bleary-eyed expression was surprisingly easy for Holtzmann to read. 

“I know,” she murmured sheepishly, “we need to talk about this. But I just need it to be after this run is over, okay?” 

Erin knew that she’d never fully understand the inner workings of her girlfriend’s brain. But she did understand that Holtzmann was navigating and orchestrating in the only way that made sense to her, and so she asked if the blonde needed help getting ready: did she have water? Snacks? Layers to keep warm?

And then swatted Holtzmann for having none of the aforementioned items prepared. 

Holtzmann left the house bundled and loaded with snacks and drinks. 

None of which she has been able to bring herself consume on the road, her body happy to subsist on antiquated bereavement. 

The affair at the cemetery is short and untheatrical. 

Holtzmann doesn’t speak to her parents, eloquently updating them on her life. 

Instead, she drops a soldered flower pendant on the ground, where it joins the other trinkets she has placed over the years. 

Her parents were open people. Supportive of her and kind. She believes that their home would’ve always been a place where she could retreat and _feel_. 

So Holtzmann thinks about them and does just that. 

The emotions aren’t all sad. 

She thinks about how they would’ve responded to her role as a Ghostbuster. How they would’ve worried, but as two people with quiet thirsts for adventure, they also would’ve listened to her tales with great interest. 

How much they would have cared for Erin, as they cared for her friends from school—especially the ones she innocently held hands with. 

She acknowledges that she still misses them. 

That her life was rough for a long time after they died. 

But that she is ultimately proud to have been theirs. 

She wipes her tears, fixes a scowl back on her face, and clomps through the snow. 

“Can we go now?” Holtzmann asks, as she opens the car door. 

“Yes, Jillian,” Dr. Gorin says with a faint, knowing smile. 

They trade places. 

Dr. Gorin offers to continue driving, since it seems as though Holtzmann barely slept on the way, but Holtzmann insists that she is fine. 

She is exhausted by the time they reach the firehouse. She stuffs some almonds and pretzels in her mouth, realizing that she has eaten nothing, before hugging Dr. Gorin and making her way upstairs. 

Erin is already in her pajamas when she greets her in the kitchen.

“Are you still mad at me?” Holtzmann asks, not totally rid of the residual sulk from her trip. 

Erin’s eyes narrow slightly at her tone, but she doesn’t take the bait. 

“I wasn’t ever mad at you, love,” she replies honestly, “a little annoyed that we had a conversation at two in the morning that we could have had _any_ other time, but clearly this is hard for you. I’m just glad you’re home.”

“Gorin makes me do it every year,” Holtzmann shakes the snow out of her curls, pulling herself onto a stool.

“No one makes you do anything, Holtzmann,” Erin leans against the counter, facing her girlfriend. 

Holtzmann shrugs, biting her lip, chin raised and eyes burning. 

The physicist takes her girlfriend in. 

She realizes that this mood is familiar. The scowling, the vague defiance, the sense that logic isn’t going to penetrate that wall that Holtzmann has erected.

Erin smiles softly, because she _gets_ it. Everyday, it takes less untangling and unraveling for her to understand how the engineer’s various pieces fit together. 

She can picture Holtzmann at the cemetery perfectly, dragging her heels and moping while furtively feeling so much. 

She knows that Holtzmann wouldn’t want her to articulate her understanding. 

Not in a literal manner, anyway. 

“You know how sometimes you need me to spank you,” Erin says slyly, “but you can't bring yourself to give in and ask?”

Holtzmann’s cheeks color instantly. 

“I don’t ever _need_ it,” she says impishly, “but it is easier to be forced into something that makes me feel...like that.”

The two Ghostbusters nod in comfortable acknowledgment. 

Erin reaches out to touch her girlfriend’s cheek. 

“You look exhausted,” she observes. 

“I’m wired,” Holtzmann bounces on the stool for good measure, “I don’t think I can sleep yet.”

“I think you’ll be able to,” Erin says airily, grasping Holtzmann’s wrist and pulling her to their room. 

Holtzmann swallows, and gives Erin just enough resistance to indicate that she is not _exactly_ submitting. 

“Move the chair to the center of the room, please,” Erin instructs as she closes the door behind them.

“Can’t we do this on the bed?” Holtzmann stops in front of her girlfriend. 

“No,” Erin says, “we cannot.”

Holtzmann doesn’t move until Erin raises an eyebrow in warning. 

The physicist sits down in the chair and crooks a finger at the blonde. 

Holtzmann’s heart rate speeds up, the way it always does, as she moves to stand in front of her girlfriend with eager reluctance. 

“Hands on your head.”

Holtzmann complies, and Erin works quickly in getting the engineer’s pants down.

She then takes her time with the underwear.

Pausing after every step:

Looping her finger under the elastic waistband. 

Pulling the elastic away from Holtzmann’s warm skin. 

Giving it a few tugs, before ever so slowly dragging the fabric down to her girlfriend’s knees. 

Holtzmann shivers. 

Erin pushes her knees apart with her hand, letting her fingers trail upward and graze Holtzmann’s entrance. 

“Already drenched,” she remarks, pushing inward before letting the engineer feel the moisture on her fingers against her clit. 

“Baby,” Holtzmann moans. 

“We’ve got a while before we can take care of that,” Erin says cheerfully, yanking her across her knee in one fluid motion. 

It has been a while since Holtzmann has been over Erin’s knee on a chair. She takes in the angular position, and blushes when she takes notice of how high her ass is in the air. 

Erin’s hand comes down hard. She let’s that first swat land and sink in before she finds a steady rhythm. 

Holtzmann can take Erin’s hand without wiggling too much, which doesn’t suit Erin well in this particular moment. 

She wants Holtzmann to be properly worn out when she is finished with her. 

“New rule,” she says smoothly, as she lands a particularly thuddy swat, “bend your knees and keep your feet off the floor.”

“But you always tell me to—”

“I know, darling. That’s why it’s a new rule.” 

Doing this pushes Holtzmann’s weight forward onto her arms, forcing her ass up further. The submissive presentation isn’t lost on her.

And when Erin starts swatting again, harder than before, she struggles to keep her dangling legs and feet still. 

It’s adorable from Erin’s angle, and she pauses to pat Holtzmann’s ass gently and tell her so. 

She spanks until her girlfriend’s ass is evenly red and stinging. 

And then continues to spank more. 

Erin has been spanking for ten minutes when Holtzmann slips and places her feet on the floor. She pulls them back up immediately, but the damage is done. 

Erin stops spanking and clicks her tongue teasingly. 

Somehow, the shame feels real as Holtzmann flushes. 

“Stand up,” Erin says, and Holtzmann obeys, moving to kneel in front of her, “we still haven’t used that new tawse yet.”

Holtzmann looks up at her girlfriend, the picture of apprehension and excitement. 

There were various implements gifted for Christmas, from traditional items that they unwrapped in the privacy of their room, to wooden cheese boards and guitar shaped wooden spoons, which they sneakily mixed into the vanilla presents that they opened with their friends. 

The tawse is small and leather, with three tails. 

“What position should I put you in?”

Holtzmann slumps downward, the backs of her legs cooling her burning ass, “I don’t know.”

“You have no opinion,” Erin says, running her fingers through Holtzmann’s hair. 

“I don’t want to decide.”

“Alright,” Erin taps her nose, “go fetch it for me.”

Holtzmann is so aware of how she must look scampering off to grab the new implement, naked from the waist down, ass red.

She hands the implement to Erin and waits for further instruction. 

“Take the rest of your clothing off first,” Erin crosses her legs as she watches the blonde strip, “and sit on my lap.”

Holtzmann is confused, but she does as she is told. 

Erin wraps her arms around her, squeezing tightly, and places a few kisses against Holtzmann’s back. 

“Now, I want you to put your hands on the ground, and wrap your legs around me.”

Holtzmann inwardly groans—knowing that she can't comment on how exposing this position is going to be, when she just said that she had no opinion on what position they should finish in. 

And the wheelbarrow position _is_ exposing. Holtzmann shudders with the knowledge that Erin can see every part of her as she holds herself up on shaky arms. 

But the close contact is also comforting. Erin is warm, and safe, and grounding. 

The physicist takes a moment to run her fingers over every inch of her girlfriend’s skin reddened skin, before delivering ten swats with her hand. She then taps Holtzmann’s ass with the tawse. 

Slowly, she increases the force of the fast strokes, and like a boiling lobster, it takes Holtzmann a moment to realize that it _stings_.

Her legs buck slightly, eliciting a chuckle from Erin. 

The tawse leaves three red lines each time it falls. 

Erin pauses to study them, before bringing the tawse down hard. 

Holtzmann yelps. 

Erin enjoys that reaction, so she continues to repeat the strokes, watching as lines of deeper red appear up and down Holtzmann’s ass. 

Holtzmann struggles to take the burning strokes and hold herself upright. 

“Think you can count for me?”

No, Holtzmann thinks, but she doesn’t like to back down from a challenge. 

“Sure!”

“Let's do another twenty,” Erin says, “and then I’m going to get you into bed.”

“Twenty?” Holtzmann squeaks. 

“I think that’ll be the perfect amount,” Erin brings the strap down even harder. 

“Ooh—ONE.”

The following eighteen strokes are deliciously punishing, leaving crisscrossed triple lines across Holtzmann’s skin. She takes them well, but she can’t help but squirm, which only makes her more aware of her placement against Erin. 

And how wet she is. 

She is thinking about this when the twentieth stroke falls. She forgets to count it, realizing this only when Erin begins tapping the tawse against her ass. 

“Fuck—twenty!”

Erin doesn’t stop tapping, letting Holtzmann sweat it out for a moment before speaking.

“We didn’t discuss what the penalty is for forgetting to count.”

“Baby,” Holtzmann whines. 

“A penalty stroke? Corner time? Starting the whole strapping over from the beginning?”

“THE FIRST ONE.”

Erin, of course, had no intention of enacting either of the latter options. 

She brings the tawse down a final time. 

“Twenty one.”

“Mm,” Erin sets the strap aside, “you are so wet, my love. I can see it.”

Holtzmann lets her hair fall in her face, effectively hiding it. She gasps when Erin slips a finger inside her, and moans when the physicist curls it a few times, before adding a second. 

Holtzmann fights her exhausted body’s urge to give out under the pleasure, as Erin’s other hand finds her clit.

Erin fucks her harder then, and the engineer sinks to her elbows, preparing to ride the waves of ecstasy swirling inside her. 

As she goes limp in pleasure, she thinks that Erin is definitely a welcome addition to her yearly tradition. 

This is where she fits in.

There is no graceful way to untangle herself from her current position, so Holtzmann flops to the floor in a panting heap. 

Erin helps her up and over to their bed, pulling the comforter and sheets back. 

“Think you can sleep now?”

“Yes,” Holtzmann says sleepily, “but what about you?”

Holtzmann reaches for Erin’s pajamas pants, but Erin steps back. 

“Get in bed, darling.”

Holtzmann pouts, but crawls into bed. 

The sheets are soft and the pillows feathery. 

Erin scoots in next to her, wrapping her arms tightly around her girlfriend. 

“Love you,” Holtzmann murmurs.

“I love you too,” Erin kisses her forehead, “maybe I should spank you every night before bed if this is the result.”

Holtzmann squirms. 

“Please let me touch you,” she sounds comically incapable of doing any such thing, but Erin appreciates her attentiveness. 

She slips her hand between her own legs in response, and Holtzmann moans sleepily when she realizes what Erin is doing. 

She is lulled to sleep as she feels Erin steadily drawing her fingers in and out, an unusual but effective lullaby. 

It doesn’t take much for Erin, just some focus on the way Holtzmann looked, hands on the floor, legs spread against her, as she took the tawse. 

The last thing Holtzmann remembers before drifting off is Erin’s breath quickening as pleasure takes hold.


	23. Just a Drabble

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is just a quick drabble, ya'll! Enjoy!

It seems like a good idea--to tease Erin relentlessly about her inability to wield a spatula. 

Holtzmann isn’t thinking. If she was, she’d note that the backdrop for her thinly veiled references to Erin’s inability to spank isn’t ideal.

Bacon cracking, pancakes sizzling, their friends sitting at the dining room table, watching Erin cook. 

“It might just be that your arms are weak, buttercup,” she drawles, “but your flipping technique is off.”

“Holtzmann,” Erin sighs, “not that tired joke.”

The engineer can only take that as a challenge.

“The truth isn’t joke,” she says, “and your little bird arms can flap, but there is no precision.”

“Holtzmann,” Erin growels, turning away from the stove, “stop.”

With a meaningful glance towards Abby and Patty, she flips a pancake. 

Which promptly lands on the floor.

At this point, Holtzmann knows she shouldn't push, but oh, Erin is already red in the face and flustered, just how she likes the physicist, and the temptation is just too great.

“Typical, poor aim, missing your target--”

Erin has Holtzmann’s wrist in her grasp in an instant, pulling her to her feet. 

And not to their room, as Holtzmann thought she would, but back over to the counter.

“Erin,” Holtzmann digs her heels into the floor.

“Just pull out of my weak grasp, Holtz, that shouldn't be too hard.”

Holtzmann feels that familiar feeling in the pit of her stomach--burning, arousing regret.

She is shocked when Erin pushes her over the counter.

Right there.

In front of her friends.

Bravado gone, she can’t bear to turn around a sneak a glance at them. She wonders if they’ve scattered, but then Erin speaks. 

“I suppose it was only a matter of time before you both saw me deal with Holtzmann,” her fingers loop into the blonde’s pants, drawing them to her knees. 

“Baby,” Holtzmann whimpers, “not in front of them.”

“Oh, but it was okay for you to mock me in front of them?”

“I wasn’t mocking! I was teasing. See, you are just so sensitive.”

There is a long silence. Enough time for Holtzmann to deeply ponder how much she shouldn’t have said that.

“Let’s show them just how _sensitive_ you are.”

With that, Erin yanks Holtzmann’s cotton briefs down. 

Holtzmann can’t breathe. She cannot believe that Erin is going all in in front of the Ghostbusters. 

The physicist raises the spatula and brings it down hard.

Multiple times, in fast succession. 

Holtzmann tries not to move, painfully aware of her audience, but it is near impossible with the way Erin is bringing that whippy plastic cooking utensil across her ass. 

It _stings_. 

And Erin isn’t giving her an opportunity to catch her breath--an opportunity for the burn to settle. 

She knows that her ass must be bright red at this point, on full display in the middle of their kitchen.

Erin finishes with a few hard swipes to her girlfriend's thighs, before pulling up her pants and underwear. 

“You’re lucky that I don’t make you stand in the corner,” she says, grabbing Holtzmann’s elbow, turning her around to face Patty and Erin.

Holtzmann covers her pink, flushed face.

And when she finally feels brave enough to remove her hands, she sees Erin’s pretty blue eyes, watching her curiously. 

“Was that a nightmare, or a wet dream?”

“Wowza,” Holtzmann pants, “I don’t actually know.”

The engineer curls into the crook of her girlfriend’s arm, detailing the events of her dream. 

“I’d never spank you in front of Abby and Patty,” Erin laughs, “not that you don’t deserve it.”

“I don’t,” Holtzmann yawns. 

“You’ve got quite the spanking coming tomorrow for all that mocking you’ve been doing.”

“Not mocking--teasing.”

“One day my hand will impress upon you that that distinction doesn't exist.”

“Your _hand_ won’t impress anything upon me.”

“I’ll respond properly to that comment tomorrow.”

Erin kisses Holtzmann sweetly.

Holtzmann closes her eyes, falling back asleep as both relief and anticipation wash over her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Communicate with me on Tumblr:
> 
> Tenureisfordudes.tumblr.com
> 
> Sometimes it takes me a long ass time to reply, but I answer questions about being kinky, and I post drabbles based on real life experiences with my incorrigible girlfriend.


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